Bain forecasts a $1 trillion US holiday season, with inflation behind half the rise

Bain & Company forecasts that US retail sales in November and December will grow 4.5% and pass $1 trillion for the first time. The firm published the outlook on 3 September.

Bain puts November and December growth at 4.5%

A year ago the same forecast pointed to 4% growth and a season worth more than $975bn. The new number is slightly higher and it crosses the trillion-dollar line. Bain counts November and December sales together, so the figure covers the whole run from the first pre-Christmas promotions to the last week of the year.

Online rises 9 percent, shops 2.5 percent

The firm splits the season by channel. Online and other non-store sales should grow 9%. Sales inside shops should grow 2.5%. Shops still take roughly 70% of the money, so the smaller percentage sits on the bigger pile.

Buyers do not sort themselves neatly either. About 40% told Bain they plan to split shopping evenly between screens and shops. Roughly 24% expect to buy mostly online and 13% mostly in store.

Inflation covers more than half the increase

Bain says inflation accounts for over half of the nominal rise. Headline inflation runs at 3.4%. Core inflation, which leaves out fuel and energy, runs at 2.5%. Nominal wage growth in July was 3.1%.

Read together, those numbers say the season grows mostly because prices are higher. People are not carrying much more home than last year.

Nearly a quarter of shoppers plan to start in an AI chat

Close to 24% of shoppers told Bain they plan to begin holiday shopping on an AI platform such as Google Gemini, ChatGPT or Claude. A year earlier the share was 17%. A further 13% expect to use a shop’s own AI helper, the kind Walmart calls Sparky and Amazon runs as Alexa for Shopping.

More than 90% said they plan to shop Black Friday, Cyber Monday or another large sales event. That leaves very little of the season outside a discount window.

Aaron Cheris points retailers at the price and promotion balance

Aaron Cheris, a partner at Bain, said in the firm’s own commentary that “the key for retailers is to make the most of the crucial holiday season” by getting price and promotion right. The view is the consultancy’s, not an independent reading of the data.

Where the money lands matters for ad budgets too. Retail media keeps spreading into physical chains, and Ace Hardware added weather triggers to its retail media network for exactly this stretch of the year. On the measurement side Google Ads added store sales reporting, which matters when 70% of the season happens off screen.

What the price-led growth changes for December plans

The useful line here is not the trillion. It is that most of the growth is price rather than volume. A campaign judged on baskets and units will look weak against last year, even when revenue rises.

Two things follow. Set promotion depth before Black Friday instead of reacting during it, because more than nine in ten shoppers will be waiting for a sale anyway. And write product pages in plain, checkable facts, since a quarter of shoppers say their list now starts in a chat window that reads those pages back to them.