Figuring out when to buy gifts for the holidays can be endlessly stressful: Is it better to scoop up purchases before the big Thanksgiving sales events, spring into action during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, or wait until the last minute? NBC News is helping shoppers answer those questions by tracking the online prices of five popular gift items in major categories this season.
We evaluated products from kitchen appliances and TVs to Bluetooth headphones, toys and shoes, zeroing in on five that are likely to be bestsellers in their categories, according to experts at Consumer Reports, Wirecutter and Wired:
- General electronics: Apple AirPods Pro 2
- Toys: Magna-Tiles
- Kitchen appliances: Ninja 12-cup programmable coffee brewer
- Apparel and footwear: Reebok Club C sneakers
- TVs: TCL 65-inch TV
We’ve been tracking the prices of these items on major retail websites — including Amazon, Target, Walmart and others — every week from Amazon’s Prime Day back in July through the holiday shopping period, highlighting when each of them is cheapest.
What we’ve found so far: For one thing, Amazon tends to set the pace of discounts, but its major rivals are following closely on the e-commerce giant’s heels with increasingly competitive discounts of their own. Second, retailers change prices regularly, making unannounced price cuts on various items all the time. That creates something of a trade-off for customers — with more opportunities to hit on a deal but fewer ways to plan ahead to snag one.
“It’s like a race, it’s a game,” shopping expert Trae Bodge told NBC News last week.
Even so, the discounts are now ramping up. Take the AirPods and the Ninja coffee maker, for example: This past weekend, both hit their lowest online prices since NBC News began tracking them months ago.
Where NBC News is monitoring prices
- AirPods Pro 2: Amazon, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Apple, Keepa (which tracks prices on Amazon)
- Magna-Tiles: Amazon, Walmart, Magna-Tiles, Keepa
- Ninja coffee brewer: Amazon, Target, Home Depot, Keepa
- Reebok Club C’s: Amazon, Walmart, DSW, Zappos, Reebok, Keepa
- TCL TV: Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Macy’s, TCL, Keepa
For the first time in several years, holiday shoppers are confronting an economy in which inflation has almost entirely slowed to a normal rate, even though many consumers are still adjusting to the higher levels where prices have settled. In a holiday survey the accounting firm PwC shared with NBC News, 59% of consumers said inflation was likely to influence their shopping decisions.
Even so, consumer sentiment has been inching higher for the last four months, and bargain-hungry shoppers are rewarding many retailers for leaning into deals and discounts. Overall spending is projected to increase by 7% to an average of $1,638 per shopper this holiday season, according to PwC.
Adobe, which tracks e-commerce spending, told NBC News it forecasts total holiday spending to top $240 billion this year, up 8.4% from last year — which would be the biggest annual jump since the start of the pandemic. Over half of this spending is expected to be driven by electronics, apparel, furniture and home goods.
The company foresees holiday discounts roughly as deep as those on offer last year but a “much stronger reaction from the consumer,” according to Adobe lead digital analyst Vivek Pandya.
People are “willing to spend on discretionary goods, holiday gift items, but they want to at the right price and at really strong value levels,” he said.
Indeed, 37% of shoppers recently told Deloitte researchers that they only plan to make purchases around Black Friday and Cyber Monday if items are at least 50% off.
Average discounts aren’t expected to be quite that deep. After peaking at roughly 30% around Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday four days later, Adobe expects them to soften again for the rest of December “but remain relatively favorable for consumers,” Pandya said.
The best time to buy might vary by product category.
Thanksgiving Day should be an ideal time to shop for toys, appliances, furniture and sporting goods, Adobe said, whereas Black Friday will have the lowest prices for televisions. Cyber Monday should see some of the steepest discounts on general electronics and apparel, but the best deals for computers are projected to arrive on Saturday, Nov. 30.
The upsides for shoppers could go beyond price, Pandya added. Retailers are also “going to have to decide how they compete on price versus other differentiators that they offer, be it shipping perks [or] perks around loyalty and membership programs,” he said.