Computing products/consumer electronics and financial services are returning to reality. For these industries, the pandemic bump is over. There are slightly different forces at play for computing products/consumer electronics and financial services.

Discretionary categories, particularly computer and consumer electronics and toys and hobbies, will be the fastest-growing sectors through 2028, per EMARKETER’s forecast. As inflation stabilizes, consumers will likely redirect their spending toward these non-essential items.

As a result, a wide swath of companies that sell housing-related products—including home improvement retailers like Home Depot and Lowe’s, consumer electronics retailers like Best Buy, and furniture sellers like Wayfair—suffered. Making it cheaper to borrow money could drive more consumers to splurge on big-ticket items like TVs.

For example, 53% of shoppers will wait for assistance if bath and body products are locked up and 56% will wait for makeup and cosmetics, compared with 74% for consumer electronics. Our take: Retailers’ efforts to rein in retail theft may have an outsize effect on their short- and long-term business. The near-term effect is a lost sale.

It’s the latest expansion of AI software and hardware into new consumer electronics markets. Smarter homes run their own AI: Plumeria is touting privacy, cost-efficiency, and less reliance on the cloud infrastructure, which are limitations of existing systems. It has the potential to increase AI use in smart home products, per TechCrunch.

But large percentages of its shoppers bought things that typically require a lot of research, such as financial products and consumer electronics. As with Snapchat, there was a relatively small sample of respondents that left us with a high margin of error.

However, computer and consumer electronics has the highest CTR growth in Q2 at 9.0% YoY. 2. Ad spend is growing fastest in beauty and personal care. US retail media ad spend on beauty and personal care grew 38.1% YoY in Q2 2024, faster than any other category. However, that percentage is down from 48.1% YoY growth in Q1, per Skai.

Those efforts could provide a small impact on spending, particularly among the array of retailers and brands—including home improvement, furniture, and consumer electronics sellers—that struggle when fewer consumers move. Our take: The winner of the presidential election will inherit an economy that’s humming.

Computer and consumer electronics and toy and hobby will be the two fastest-growing categories between 2024 and 2028. Ecommerce will account for 20.0% of total retail sales by 2028. Consumers are buying more essential goods online, boosting ecommerce's total share of retail. The trend, spurred by the pandemic, continues to drive growth. Holiday ecommerce sales growth is poised to increase in 2024.

In turn, that could lift a wide array of retailers and brands—including home improvement, furniture, and consumer electronics sellers—that struggle when fewer consumers move.

Despite the influx of China-based sellers reaching US consumers on these marketplaces, Amazon continues to gain share of sales in apparel, footwear, and accessories; computers and consumer electronics; and furniture and home furnishings.

But annual ecommerce sales in some of the most important back-to-school categories are expected to grow at slower-than-average rates in 2024, including computer and consumer electronics, furniture and home furnishings, and office equipment and supplies. K-12 growth will outpace total back-to-school season sales. At 63% of total dollar growth, the K-12 cohort overindexes on purchases made online.