Twin Cities holiday shoppers spend less, spend late compared with rest of U.S.

Minnesota's traditional, Midwestern reserve is playing out during the holidays.

With holiday spending, Twin Cities residents plan to spend less, start late and stick with brick and mortar more than the rest of the United States, according to two recent surveys.

Minnesotans are in the mood to spend during the 2017 holiday season but aren't as optimistic as the rest of the country. According to spending surveys conducted locally by the University of St. Thomas and Deloitte Consulting LLP, metro residents will spend 3.5 percent more than last year. National holiday spending is expected to rise by about 4.5 percent.

"The local economy is good, the stock market is way up, and corporate earnings are decent," said Dave Brennan, professor emeritus of marketing at St. Thomas and one of the study's researchers. "But the lagging thing is salary and wage increases."

Minnesotans will fork over between $950 to $1,083 for holiday gifts, socializing and entertaining compared with about $1,226 nationally. Still, the amount is the highest since the University of St. Thomas began its survey 16 years ago.

Where will we be swiping and slotting our credit cards? The five most-popular brick-and-mortar stores, in order, are Target, Macy's, Walmart, Kohl's and Nordstrom.

The most popular malls in descending order are Mall of America, Rosedale, Ridgedale, Eden Prairie Center, Southdale and Premium Outlets of Eagan, according to the St. Thomas survey.

It showed that Twin Cities shoppers are nearly evenly split between spending online vs. bricks and mortar.

That's a divergence from national numbers. Fifty percent of shoppers nationally plan to purchase online compared with 36 percent shopping in store, according to Deloitte. However, Twin Cities shoppers plan to spend more of their dollars in stores (54 percent) than online (46 percent).

"There's some nervousness about the overall economy, but people still trust mass merchants, including large homegrown merchants," said Matt Marsh, retail leader for Deloitte.

That's a departure from Deloitte's national numbers showing that survey respondents expect to spend most of their holiday dollars online, leaving just 42 percent of the total for in-store shopping.

Twin Cities residents also wait to shop for Christmas. Only 13 percent of us shop before Thanksgiving, while the majority hold off until December or even January to complete the majority of our shopping.

Call it wise or call it cheap, 16 percent of us wait until after Dec. 25 to spend the remainder of their holiday budget, according to Deloitte.

The St. Thomas survey included 362 online responses from the 13-county metro area, including two counties in western Wisconsin. The Deloitte Twin Cities survey included 441 online responses conducted in early September.

John Ewoldt • 612-673-7633