• Sensormatic Solutions full predictions include top busiest holiday shopping days for Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, United Kingdom/Ireland and U.S.
• Black Friday is expected to be the busiest United States holiday shopping day in 2021
• Heading into the second holiday season of the COVID-19 pandemic, in-store U.S. retail traffic fiscal year to-date is down -18.6% from 2019 pre-pandemic levels
• Sensormatic Solutions is helping retailers solve complex challenges related to consumer confidence, health and safety as part of Johnson Controls’ mission

Sensormatic Solutions, the leading global retail solutions portfolio of Johnson Controls, today released its predictions for the top busiest shopping days of the 2021 holiday season around the world. The annual predictions are informed by retail traffic data analytics within the company’s intelligent operating platform, Sensormatic IQ.

“While COVID-19 is still making headlines as we head into the holidays, vaccine availability and retailers’ health and safety measures have put us in a different place with many consumers more comfortable shopping in stores compared to the 2020 holiday season,” said Bjoern Petersen, president at Sensormatic Solutions. “Through this busy time, retailers can lean heavily on innovative technology to keep shelves stocked, predict and prevent loss events and keep customers safe through occupancy monitoring and resulting social distancing. Leveraging prescriptive insights provided by connected solutions, retailers can also ensure they’re reaching the right consumer with the right item at the right time throughout the season.”

On average, the top 10 busiest shopping days in the U.S., account for approximately 40% of all holiday retail traffic. Sensormatic Solutions predicts U.S. in-store traffic for this year’s holiday season will be down between -10% and -15% compared to 2019, the most recent normalized year. Overall, in 2021, in-store U.S. retail traffic fiscal year to-date is down -18.6% from 2019. However, since the beginning of August, traffic is improving slightly, trending down -15.1% from 2019.

“Our predicted busiest days mark the peaks of in-store traffic, but we expect that like last year, consumers will start their shopping earlier to offset inventory limitations shipping delays and ongoing concerns about social distancing,” said Brian Field, senior director, Sensormatic Solutions, Global Retail Consulting Practice, whose team predicts the top busiest days of the holiday season. “Additionally, with Christmas Day on a Saturday for the first time since 2010, and stores closed that day to observe the holiday, we expect more holiday shopper traffic than usual will occur in the days leading up to Christmas and on December 26.”

The full list of predicted busiest shopping days in the U.S. is as follows:

1. Friday, November 26 – Black Friday
2. Saturday, December 18 – Super Saturday
3. Thursday, December 23 – Thursday before Christmas
4. Saturday, December 11 – 2^nd Saturday in December
5. Sunday, December 26 – Day after Christmas, aka “Boxing Day”
6. Wednesday, December 22 – Wednesday before Christmas
7. Saturday, November 27 – Saturday after Thanksgiving
8. Saturday, December 4 – 1^st Saturday in December
9. Tuesday, December 21 – Tuesday before Christmas
10. Sunday, December 19 – Sunday before Christmas

The predicted top busiest shopping days globally include:

Sensormatic Solutions and its intelligent operating platform for retail, Sensormatic IQ, is a vital component of Johnson Controls OpenBlue technologies and innovations which promotes healthy people, healthy places and healthy planet. Sensormatic Solutions is helping retailers solve complex challenges related to consumer confidence, health and safety as part of its mission.

To learn about the top drivers of this holiday season’s busiest shopping days and how Sensormatic Solutions is supporting retailers’ needs, visit the 2021 Busiest Shopping Days Report. For more Sensormatic Solutions holiday insights, follow along on LinkedIn and Twitter, using #SensormaticHolidays2021.

About Johnson Controls

At Johnson Controls (NYSE:JCI) we transform the environments where people live, work, learn and play. As the global leader in smart, healthy and sustainable buildings, our mission is to reimagine the performance of buildings to serve people, places and the planet.

With a history of more than 135 years of innovation, Johnson Controls delivers the blueprint of the future for industries such as healthcare, schools, data centers, airports, stadiums, manufacturing and beyond through its comprehensive digital offering OpenBlue. With a global team of 100,000 experts in more than 150 countries, Johnson Controls offers the world's largest portfolio of building technology, software as well as service solutions with some of the most trusted names in the industry. For more information, visit www.johnsoncontrols.com or follow us @johnsoncontrols on Twitter.

About Sensormatic Solutions

Sensormatic Solutions is the leading global retail solutions portfolio of Johnson Controls powering operational excellence at scale and enabling smart and connected shopper engagement. Our intelligent digital operating platform – Sensormatic IQ – combines the full Sensormatic Solutions portfolio, including unmatched insights into retail inventory, shopper behavior, and loss prevention and liability, and Retailer and third-party solutions with advanced technologies, like AI and Machine Learning. This enables retailers to act on prescriptive, data-driven outcomes and confidently move into the future. Our retail portfolio features the premier Sensormatic, ShopperTrak and TrueVUE brands. Please visit Sensormatic Solutions or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and our YouTube channel.

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