Holiday Data Spotlight: What Markets Spend the Most on Toys and Games?

Tis the season to spend money! The holiday shopping season is well underway, with Americans getting out their wallets to buy gifts for many of the important people in their lives. Retailers consider the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas one of the most important of the year, putting on big campaigns around Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the weeks thereafter.

In October 2023, NerdWallet conducted its annual holiday shopping survey of more than 2,000 U.S. adults. The company reported that 85% of respondents plan to buy gifts for friends and loved ones, spend an average of $831.

In November 2023, The Conference Board conducted its holiday spending survey, which found that consumers intend to spend an average of $654 on holiday gifts and $330 on holiday-related, non-gift items. Consumers responded that they planned to spend more than 2022 on several gift categories, including gift cards, vacation and travel, and toys and games.

What cities does Santa need to incorporate into his route?

(Or more accurately, what markets in the U.S. spend the most on toys and games for the kids?)

With many shoppers apparently planning to spend more on those items this holiday season, we thought it might be fun to look to the data about spending in this category.

We compared population data (from our data partner, PopStats) to annual per capita spend on toys and games (using consumer spending patterns data from our data partner, Synergos Technologies Inc.). We then ranked all 927 core-based statistical areas (CBSAs) in the country, which includes both metropolitan and micropolitan areas.

Top 25 per capita spend on toys and games

Here are the top 25 CBSAs for per capita spend on toys and games:

There are a few important things to mention about this ranking:

• Spending data takes into account the composition of residents. So, it’s conceivable that CBSAs with higher income and more children are likely to rank higher on the list than those with lower average household income and fewer children of “toy-enjoying” age.
• Per capita spending can confuse some people because it often is low for categories that many people don’t participate in. Although we could’ve attempted to eliminate the portion of the population that is unlikely to spend much (or any) on toys and games, this could cloud the data with incorrect assumptions.
• Again, spending on any category that isn’t essential is highly correlated with income. In this study, it seems that the markets with the highest spend are those that with higher-income residents and/or expensive products. Thus, it should come as no surprise that per capita spending is high in places like Hawaii and Alaksa, where products of all kinds tend to be expensive, and New York City, where incomes are higher.

Want to know more about the data sources you can access in SiteSeer? Curious about what other kinds of spending pattern data STI collects (that you can analyze in SiteSeer)? Contact us for a demo and to learn more about our many data partners with data on everything from consumer spending to demographics to foot traffic and more.