At the 2025 NRF Big Show, Joe Shasteen, RetailNext's Global Head of Advanced Analytics, presented the 2024 YoY traffic trends, focusing on festive traffic. Joe emphasized the positive performance of key shopping occasions, such as Black Friday, Easter, Mother's Day, and Super Saturday, in physical stores. He explained that since 2017, these occasions have provided remarkable spikes in store traffic, and the levels are now comparable to the pre-pandemic performance.

Moreover, we’ve tracked a large increases in shopper traffic after Christmas 2024 compared to previous years, signifying pent-up demand. Jewelry came out tops as the best-performing category in 2024 in terms of traffic, with home being lowest. Post covid, the category has struggled to recover from the lockdown-era spike compared to when people were investing more markedly in home goods and refurbishment. 

Joe also presented key takeaways from our UK and US Consumer Sentiment Surveys.

KEEP WATCHING: Joe's Executive Session On Overall US Traffic Trends With Andrew Neelon