Read time 10 minutes
Executive Summary :
Optimove Insights' 2026 Summer Shopping Report shows that consumers enter the season with optimism and a clear sense of what they want.
Purchases start early: a significant share of shoppers said they began shopping in the first trimester, but the bulk of shopping will continue through June. Brands need to start early.
More than half of the consumers plan to increase spending this year compared to 2025, with clothing, swimwear, beauty, and outdoor gear leading category interest. Shopping will be mainly multichannel across most channels, with consumers moving between online and in-store experiences.
Quality is the key factor in determining which brands are considered, but price remains an important catalyst in driving shoppers to act. Summer consumers are attentive, willing to try new brands, and to switch retailers for a better deal.
The brands winning this summer will be those that can identify rising intent early, deliver relevant omnichannel messages, and move quickly from insight to campaign execution. Positionless Marketing gives marketers the real-time data and operational speed to do exactly that, without losing momentum between analysis, creation, and activation.
Methodology :
Optimove surveyed 648 U.S. consumers in March 2026, ages 18+, with household incomes of $75,000+. The analysis in this report focuses on Mother’s Day shopping behaviors and attitudes, using both dedicated questions and related cross-survey data on discovery, decision-making, messaging, payments, and omnichannel behavior.
Findings:
More than half of shoppers (52%) say their budget for summer shopping will be more than last year, while 31% expect to spend the same. Only 17% say they will spend less.
Clothing stands out as a clear shopping priority, selected by 81% of shoppers, followed by swimwear (50%), beauty and skincare products (49%), and outdoor gear (48%). Quality is the most important factor for 81% of respondents when choosing a brand or product, followed by price (70%) and brand reputation (45%).
Insights:
Summer shopping is emerging as a season of economic confidence. Most consumers expect to increase spending, creating a favorable environment for brands to innovate and differentiate. But it also takes a clear strategy to reach customers and hold their attention, as they signal that not every product will benefit equally from consumer spending confidence.
Quality will set the standard, meaning shoppers still want purchases to feel durable, useful, and appropriate for this and next seasons. Price follows closely behind, showing that even in an optimistic market, value remains essential to converting consumer interest into purchasing. The winning brands will be those that deliver a perceived “bang for the buck.”
How Marketers Should Respond:
Brands should approach summer as a high-intent season that rewards strong positioning, brand differentiation, and clear value communication. Messaging should emphasize quality and price, focusing on creating and reinforcing brand values rather than relying only on discounting.
When competition isn't just based on price, marketers need consumers' data more than ever. Being able to identify growing interest in key products, pinpoint offers to consumer priorities and behavior, and activate campaigns without delays between analysis, creation, and implementation is essential to success. Positioning Marketing empowers marketers to respond to seasonal demand in real time, helping brands deliver the right product, the right message, and the right value signal while summer purchase intent is at its peak.
Findings:
As seen in the previous section, quality drives summer shopping for 81% of consumers, followed by price at 70%. Discounts or promotions rank at 28%, outperforming convenience, sustainability, trendiness, and recommendations.
Despite quality influencing shopping intentions, price is the factor that triggers action: 59% say an item going on an early sale would sometimes and often motivate them to buy. When it comes to picking new merchants to buy from, better prices are the top motivator for shopping at an unplanned location (44%) and trying a new brand (80%).
Insights:
Summer shoppers are entering the season seeking products that are perceived as well-made, worthwhile, and long-lasting. In this sense, quality and brand reputation set the threshold for consideration and help determine which brands are being seriously considered.
However, price and promotions remain powerful motivators in shaping conversion and trial, even when consumers are not yet ready to buy. Price can accelerate demand, even when the original purchase motivation is quality. Price plays a strong role in brand and retailer switching.
In conclusion, there is no single factor in winning the consumer. Cost-effectiveness, with quality standing out at a price that delivers value compared to the competition, will be key this season. Marketers must support those attributes with timely, relevant, and well-orchestrated communications.
How Marketers Should Respond:
Summer marketing campaigns should consider quality as the cornerstone of top-of-funnel messaging focused on brand value and recognition. Once interest is piqued, price should be used strategically to create urgency and reduce hesitation, always anchored in product benefits and performance, and not just in generic promotions with price reductions.
It is crucial for marketers to have access to real-time customer behavioral data at every stage of the purchasing journey and to quickly move from analysis to campaign execution. Positionless Marketing enables that, helping brands identify and protect demand, influence conversion, and respond instantly when summer consumers are ready to buy.
Findings:
Summer shoppers are predominantly multichannel across most categories: 59% of shoppers plan to buy soft goods both in-store and online, 50% say the same for skincare and beauty, and 46% for hard goods.
However, category differences remain clear: hard goods show a stronger in-store only shopping preference (34%), while travel is the most online-led category, with 48% planning to shop exclusively online.
Insights:
Across all categories, the dominant summer purchase behavior switches between digital and physical environments rather than choosing one over the other. Consumers will end up picking one of the two channels to make the purchase, but in general, as seen in previous reports, they will browse online, compare, validate in-store, and purchase across channels depending on their necessities.
However, the consumer’s level of flexibility depends on the product category.
The purchasing behavior of consumer goods, beauty, and health products demonstrates a stronger multichannel trend, with possibly more diverse buying journeys that include several touchpoints with the brands, relationship building, price comparisons, quality verification, and promotions. This underscores the need for omnichannel communications.
On the other hand, hard goods purchasing stands out as the one consumers prefer the most for in-store purchases. Counter to that is travel, where online-exclusive shopping is clearly the leading preference, as it is a service-based category.
This indicates that physical shopping experiences are still primarily related to validating the offer, ensuring the quality and accuracy of information, and product feel, especially for products with higher prices and/or higher performance expectations (like an outdoor barbecue grill).
How Marketers Should Respond:
Marketers must have a deep understanding of the type of relationship their consumers create with their products or services. For personal care products, which are updated annually, have high purchase frequency and lower prices, brands' touchpoints should encourage discovery, comparison, evaluation, and ultimately, purchase. In the case of durable goods with higher prices, brands can focus on a journey that leads consumers to the store to close the sale.
Regardless of the category, marketers need cohesive omnichannel communication. Marketers must be empowered to create personalized buying journeys that meet individual needs, at scale. This means being a Positionless Marketer who relies on real-time data and campaign orchestration to make the right offer, at the right time, and through the right channel to close the deal.
Findings:
Consumers begin their summer shopping gradually throughout the first half of the year: 26% of consumers surveyed said they initiated shopping as early as January and February, 12% in March, 20% in April, and 30% will begin in May or June.
A similar pattern follows expectations for promotions, with 27% wanting to receive them at the beginning of the year or earlier, 17% in March, 24% in April, 15% in May, and 11% in June.
Insights:
There is no single right moment to reach summer shoppers. While a meaningful share starts shopping at the beginning of the year, similar levels of interest continue across the following months, up until, and past the season itself. This means summer demand builds, with different consumers entering the journey at different times.
For marketers, the key insight is that summer campaigns should not depend only on one major seasonal push. Some shoppers are ready for early inspiration and planning, while others respond closer to the moment of need. The opportunity is to recognize where each consumer is in the journey and match the message to that level of readiness and type of interest.
The same applies to sale notifications. Consumers do not all want offers simultaneously, which means timing should be guided by behavior, not by a fixed campaign calendar.
How Marketers Should Respond:
Brands should treat summer as a progressive shopping journey, not a single campaign window. Campaigns should start early but evolve over time, using behavior, browsing signals, category interest, and past purchases to determine when to reach each consumer and what kind of message to deliver.
The most successful brands will be those that are empowered by Positionless Marketing to identify real-time signals of intent and respond with relevant, personalized messages, offers, and deals when each shopper is most likely to act.
Summer will not be defined by a single shopping moment, driven by a single factor, purpose, or need. Quality, price, channel, and timing all play distinct roles at different stages of the buying journey. Brands that treat summer as one campaign window will miss most of the opportunity.
The numbers are clear: shoppers are optimistic, attentive, multichannel, and distributed across the calendar in ways that require sustained engagement rather than a seasonal push. Winning requires understanding not just what consumers want, but when they are ready and how to reach them.
Positionless Marketers can deliver that, moving directly from behavioral data to audience selection to campaign execution, meeting each shopper at the right moment, with the right message, through the right place.
Optimove, the creator of Positionless Marketing, frees marketing teams from the limitations of fixed roles, giving every marketer the power to execute any marketing task instantly and independently. Positionless Marketing has been proven to improve campaign efficiency by 88%, allowing marketing teams to create more personalized engagement with existing customers.
For two years running, Optimove has been positioned as a Visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs, recognized for its AI-driven decisioning, prescriptive insights, and proven ability to orchestrate thousands of personalized campaigns in real time across channels. AI-led marketing is a hallmark of Optimove’s visionary leadership. By embedding AI directly into its platform as early as 2012, Optimove paved the way for today’s Positionless Marketing standard.
Its Positionless Marketing Platform includes Optimove Engage and Orchestrate for cross-channel campaign decisioning and orchestration; Optimove Personalize, a digital personalization engine; and Optimove Gamify, a loyalty and gamification platform.
Today, its comprehensive AI-powered suite is at the leading edge of empowering marketers to streamline workflows from Insight to Creation and through Optimization. Optimove provides industry-specific and use-case solutions for leading consumer brands globally.
Optimove Insights is the analytical and research arm of Optimove, dedicated to providing valuable industry insights and data-driven research to empower B2C businesses.
