Health and Beauty Products Draw Retail Shoppers Into Brick-and-Mortar Stores

Merchants selling on multiple channels is now the norm. However, PYMNTS Intelligence finds consumers’ spending, product choices and payment methods vary considerably from channel to channel. Many retailers have shifted toward digital convenience, but consumers continue to prioritize in-person shopping for select product types. Take health and beauty: 37% of in-store shoppers made a health and beauty purchase in the last month. This share is greater than any other product category.

Spending patterns and payment preferences differ between online and offline channels, revealing key insights into how consumers shop. For example, individuals spend an average of 68% more per retail purchase online than in physical stores. This tendency to spend more digitally holds across all retail categories.

Additionally, payment method preferences also differ, with in-store shoppers favoring debit cards while online shoppers primarily use credit. Digital wallets, for their part, are becoming increasingly popular among brick-and-mortar shoppers.

These are just some of the findings detailed in “How People Pay: Retail Shoppers’ Behaviors Vary by Shopping Channel,” a PYMNTS Intelligence exclusive report. This edition examines how retail payment behaviors differ between online and in-store shopping. It draws insights from a survey of 2,628 consumers conducted from Dec. 9, 2024, to Dec. 23, 2024.

• Retail Shoppers’ Average Basket Is 68% Higher Online Than in Stores
• Health and Beauty Products Are Brick-and-Mortar Retail’s Biggest Draw
• Shopping Channel — More Than Product Category — Is Linked to How Consumers Pay
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• Methodology

Retail Shoppers’ Average Basket Is 68% Higher Online Than in Stores

Online shopping is here to stay, but don’t count physical stores out yet. PYMNTS Intelligence data shows 2.7 times as many consumers purchased retail products in stores in the last 30 days as did so online. Yet they appear to be more selective in stores, spending considerably less.

The value of the average brick-and-mortar basket amounts to $78.50 versus $131.66 for eCommerce. This suggests that shoppers may buy fewer or less expensive items when shopping in brick-and-mortar stores.

This trend holds true across all retail categories we studied. Take, for instance, health and beauty products. Though consumers may buy these items in stores more often, they tend to spend more when they purchase them online. Purchases in this category average $84.67 in-store and $138.61 online. In other words, consumers spend 64% more on health and beauty products when they shop online.

This difference in spending habits could be due to a range of factors. For example, shoppers who make the effort to go into stores may do so with a specific item in mind. When shopping online, consumers may have access to a wider range of products. They may purchase more due to recommendation algorithms that upsell using personalized insights. They could also be less constrained by the need to carry their purchases out of a store.

Health and Beauty Products Are Brick-and-Mortar Retail’s Biggest Draw

While many retail categories have shifted towards eCommerce, health and beauty products remain a strong draw for in-store shoppers. In fact, 37% of consumers who made in-store non-grocery retail purchases in the last month bought health and beauty products. The second-most popular category for brick-and-mortar is clothing and accessories, with 24% of consumers purchasing items from this category.

Conversely, consumers shopping online are more likely to pick up hobby items, electronics and sporting goods. Books, music and hobby items are 76% more likely to be part of an online basket than an in-store purchase. Electronics and sporting goods, meanwhile, are each 61% more likely to be found in an online basket.

Generation Z consumers show a different pattern than other generations. They are more inclined to purchase health and beauty items online compared to other generations, for example. Indeed, 46% of Gen Z online retail shoppers made a health and beauty purchase digitally in the last 30 days. This share is considerably greater than the 30% of online shoppers across the entire sample who said the same.

Gen Z is more likely to buy bigger ticket items like appliances and home furnishings in physical stores. Fifteen percent of Gen Z brick-and-mortar shoppers bought home furnishings in store the previous 30 days. This figure is nearly twice the 8.1% of in-store shoppers across the sample overall who did so. Plus, 13% of these Gen Z shoppers bought appliances in stores compared to 6.4% of the sample.

Shopping Channel — More Than Product Category — Is Linked to How Consumers Pay

Although PYMNTS Intelligence data reveals a general trend in consumer payment preferences, it plays out a little differently across different product categories. For example, when buying appliances in a store, consumers use credit and debit cards at roughly the same rate. However, when buying clothing and accessories in-store, they are 80% more likely to use debit cards than credit.

It appears that consumers are more comfortable using debit cards in person than online. This could perhaps be due to perceived security risks when entering debit card information online. After all, where credit cards have spending limits, debit cards would give fraudsters access to consumers’ entire account balance.

Across all product types, credit is the most common payment method for online purchases. This is especially true for consumer electronics. Shoppers are 2.5 times as likely to use credit cards as debit cards when buying electronics digitally.

Online clothing and accessories shoppers are also open to alternative payment methods. Consumers use gift cards and buy now, pay later (BNPL) to buy these online more often than other product types.

Overall, when it comes to retail payment choice, how consumers shop matters far more than what they are buying. Whether consumers are buying digitally or in stores is a stronger predictor of payment method than product category.

Digital wallets gain popularity for in-store purchases.

Digital wallet adoption for retail purchases is growing overall, though it still lags far behind credit and debit card use. This trend is particularly clear in brick-and-mortar shopping. Between June 2022 and December 2024, the share of consumers paying for their in-store retail purchases more than doubled. It rose from 4.3% to 10%.

For online retail, the growth in that period has been more modest. Usage inched upwards from 14% to 17%. While online digital wallet use has shown an upward trajectory, it has seen a notable decline from its peak. Back in April 2024, the share of 23% of consumers paid for their online retail purchases using digital wallets.

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Methodology

“How People Pay: Retail Shoppers’ Behaviors Vary by Shopping Channel,” a PYMNTS Intelligence exclusive report, is based on a survey of 2,628 consumers conducted from Dec. 9, 2024, to Dec. 23, 2024. The report examines how retail payment behaviors in stores compare to eCommerce. Our sample was balanced to reflect the U.S. adult population across key demographic variables: 51% of respondents identified as female, and 30% reported annual incomes between $50,000 and $100,000.