Over 33% of US shoppers recently surveyed stated they begin holiday shopping before Thanksgiving.

Black Friday has been the traditional start of the holiday shopping season for many years but the numbers of people making a start on their Xmas shopping earlier seems to be on the increase. For the benefit of non-US readers, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving in the United States and usually one of the biggest grossing shopping days of the year.

In recent years, Cyber Monday has also been a big day. Cyber Monday is the the first Monday after Black Friday and marks the start of the online shopping season.

The survey from Mediamark Research & Intelligence (MRI) of over 6400 shoppers also found Baby Boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) to be the largest single age group of early shoppers; around 38%.

A tad under thirty-six percent of those surveyed state they begin shopping between Thanksgiving and December 15th. Nearly 26% commence their shopping between December 16th and 23rd. Only around 2% don’t begin their holiday shopping until Christmas Eve or Christmas Day - that’s what I call cutting it fine :)

You can read more of MRI’s survey report here (PDF). While there’s plenty of articles around on Xmas marketing, pretty much stating the same sorts of things; I offer a few alternative thoughts here.