Virtual reality and home automation systems will be among the most popular gifts for adults this year, according to a predictive analysis of shopping trends by Adobe. Kids will be asking for Barbies, Hot Wheels, and LEGOs, and “Frozen” will continue to be popular this season, three years after the Disney film’s release.
But the one hot ticket item that nearly every child (and adult) will be yearning for this year? Actually, make that two. Pokémon, the craze that caught mobile game players by storm this summer, will have two new games for the handheld Nintendo 3DS, and they'll be released on November 18, one week ahead of the holiday shopping extravaganza otherwise known as Black Friday.
To come up with the list of the hottest gift items for 2016, Adobe collects a lot of data about consumer shopping habits from the world’s largest online retailers (which are among its many clients). This year’s predictions are based on an analysis of 1 trillion visits so far in 2016 to more than 4,500 retail websites and 55 million product purchases. Adobe says that in past years, its annual holiday prediction study has had a margin of error of just 2 percent, when later compared to actual seasonal spending figures.
Adobe’s data analysts also monitored mentions on social media between August 1 and October 11 to find out which items will be the most coveted. Pokémon was by far referenced the most, with more than a half million individual shares and tweets online, followed by Barbie, who received more than 400,000 mentions on social platforms.
