Half of consumers want shopping season promotions before end of October

2025 shopping season survey unveils consumer engagement expectations

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London, UK, 28 October 2025 – Global cloud communications platform Infobip’s 2025 shopping season survey has revealed the festive period really does start earlier each year.[1] Nearly half of consumers (47%) now expect to receive promotions by the end of October with a further 31% preferring early November. The findings highlight a clear shift in consumer behaviour, with shoppers eager to plan ahead and brands needing to respond earlier to capture attention.

The study also shows that personalisation and AI are driving the shopping experience:

  • 76% of consumers say personalised offers are important in their decision making
  • 66% trust AI to handle simple shopping tasks like order tracking or product recommendations.  


A key learning from this year’s shopping season survey is that consumers globally are getting an early start on their holiday preparations – actively browsing, comparing options, and curating their wish lists well before November. The survey also highlights that shoppers increasingly want to control their brand interactions, choosing when and how they want to be contacted, and which channels they prefer.
 
For retailers, success during the crucial holiday shopping season hinges on deeply understanding consumer preferences, engaging customers at the right time, through their preferred channels, and delivering personalised, meaningful content.”

Ben Lewis

VP of Marketing and Growth at Infobip

The winning formula for businesses looking to engage customers this shopping season is a combination of timing, channel and relevance. Key insights include:

  • Early is the new on time – Globally, 47% of shoppers expect promotions to drop by late October or earlier, and 31% want them in early November.
  • Personalisation is a must – 76% of shoppers value personalised offers, with irrelevant or over-targeted campaigns being seen as intrusive by 8%.
  • Speed matters – Effective engagement must extend beyond purchase. 90% say order confirmations within minutes are essential during the holidays.
  • AI is gaining trust – 66% of shoppers trust AI for simple tasks like order tracking or product recommendations. 16% trust AI suggestions as much as human ones.
  • Omnichannel engagement is mandatory – Email remains a leading channel for holiday promotions, but WhatsApp, SMS, RCS and app notifications are catching up fast.

Read the full report here: https://www.infobip.com/blog/shopping-season-survey

[1] Research was conducted on 1,600 respondents from eight key markets: the US, the UK, France, Spain, Brazil, India, Australia, and the Philippines.

About Infobip

Infobip is a global cloud communications platform that enables businesses to build connected experiences across all stages of the customer journey. Accessed through a single platform, Infobip’s omnichannel engagement, identity, user authentication and contact centre solutions help businesses and partners overcome the complexity of consumer communications to grow business and increase loyalty. It offers natively built technology with the capacity to reach over seven billion mobile devices and ‘things’ in 6 continents connected to over 9,700+ connections of which 800+ are direct operator connections. Infobip was established in 2006 and is led by its co-founders, CEO Silvio Kutić and Izabel Jelenić.  

Recent award wins include:

  • Infobip named a Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) for the third consecutive year. In 2025, positioned furthest in Completeness of Vision (July 2025)
  • Infobip named among Top 75 in Fortune’s Europe’s Most Innovative Companies 2025, placing it in the top 25% of all listed organizations (June 2025)
  • Infobip ranked as a Leader in the Omdia CPaaS Universe Report for the third time (April 2025)
  • Infobip ranked an Established Leader in the Juniper Research Conversational AI Leaderboard (Feb 2025)
  • Infobip named a CPaaS Leader for the third time in the IDC MarketScape (Feb 2025)
  • Infobip named one of the top CPaaS providers in Metrigy’s CPaaS MetriRank Report (Dec 2024)
  • Infobip named number one among Established Leaders in RCS Business Messaging in Juniper Research’s RCS Business Messaging Competitor Leaderboard 2024 (Nov 2024)
  • Infobip recognized as the number one provider in the AIT Fraud Prevention market by Juniper Research (Oct 2024)
  • Infobip named to Fast Company’s Annual List of the World’s Most Innovative Companies (March 2024)