Shoppers Using Cashback Tools Plan to Spend 30% More This Holiday Season
Minty’s new Smart Shopper Study finds that the shoppers working hardest to save money this holiday season are the same ones planning to open their wallets widest.
Holiday demand is not softening, and the inflation pressure that everyone expected to show up as smaller carts has landed somewhere else entirely, in the amount of work a shopper now does before deciding where to buy. A new study from Minty, an AI shopping companion, surveyed 1,015 US adults between July 28 and July 31, 2026, and found 91% of shoppers concerned about inflation while 79% still plan to spend the same or more than they spent in 2025, which is the kind of split that usually resolves into a contraction and this time has not. The distance between the worry and the willingness is where the season gets decided, and shoppers are closing it with technology rather than with restraint, since 96% plan to use at least one budget-stretching strategy and the average shopper expects to use three.
What the Data Shows
AI has moved from novelty to routine. Fifty-four percent of shoppers plan to use it to shop this holiday season, and 44% say they already lean on it more than they did in 2025. The tasks are practical rather than exploratory, running to price checks (52%), gift ideas (45%), and product, brand, or retailer comparisons (38%). Time is the other payoff, and 60% say AI will save them some, with 59% expecting to bank up to 25 hours.
Cashback ranked higher still. Asked which tools help most this season, shoppers put cashback and savings apps on top, with 67% planning to use an app or a browser extension. They prioritize high cashback rates, automatic savings, and coupon finding.
The number that reframes the rest is what those tool users intend to spend. Cashback and savings-tool users plan to outspend non-users by 30%, and nearly half of them plan to increase their holiday spending, against just 13% of non-users. The saving behavior and the spending behavior travel together.
Expectations for the payoff are concrete, with about 42% expecting to save between $50 and $200 this season and another 13% expecting to save more than $200. Shoppers are also not waiting for a single sale event, or for the season to formally begin. More than 25% say they will start before October, and 14% report they are already buying. Price, and the best available deal, rank as the biggest influence on where they choose to shop.
Why the Deal Seekers Spend More
So why does the shopper hunting hardest for a discount end up with the bigger basket? Minty calls the behavior moneymaxxing, and the label fits what the numbers describe, since shoppers are stacking AI, cashback, and comparison shopping so that every dollar covers more ground. The goal is a full cart bought with the confidence that nothing was left on the table.
The moneymaxxing habit reverses a long-standing assumption about price sensitivity, in which coupon clipping reads as the signal of a constrained customer worth less over time. The shopper running a browser extension, and asking a model to compare three retailers, is doing that work because they intend to buy, and to buy at volume. The tools remove the hesitation that would otherwise cap the basket. A shopper who knows the price is right does not need to talk themselves into the purchase.
The study also found the pattern holding across age, gender, region, and household income. The breadth puts the pattern well outside the young-and-online segment where this kind of shopping usually gets filed. The general population has adopted a set of tools, and expects them to work.
What This Means for Commerce
The first implication is about customer valuation, and it lands on a question plenty of retailers have already answered the other way. If the price-conscious shoppers are also the highest-spending ones, what is the case for treating deal seekers as low-value traffic? The segmentation that separates full-price buyers from discount buyers may be sorting on the wrong variable this season.
The second implication is about where the decision now happens. With 52% using AI to check prices, and price ranking as the top influence on retailer choice, much of the comparison is settled before a shopper ever reaches a product page. A retailer whose pricing and availability are hard for a model to read is being compared anyway, and represented badly. The fix is a merchandising and data problem before it is an advertising one.
The third implication is timing. Shoppers starting before October, and the 14% already buying, pull the season earlier than a Black Friday-anchored calendar assumes. A promotional plan built around a late-November peak will meet part of this demand after it has already been spent.
Rodney Mason, Chief Marketing Officer of Minty, framed the operator takeaway this way: “Holiday shoppers are using AI and cashback to optimize two things they never have enough of during this busy season – money and time. They still want to participate in the season, but they want technology to help them to be more in control of the value they get from every purchase. For retailers, that means the most price-conscious shoppers may still be some of the most valuable, and winning them will increasingly depend on proving value quickly, reducing friction and making it easier to find the best deal.”
One caveat is worth naming plainly, since Minty sells the category this study measures. The finding that cashback users spend 30% more is a favorable one for a company whose business is cashback and AI-assisted shopping, and no independent benchmark confirms it. The directional signal, that saving tools and spending intent rise together rather than trading off against each other, is the part operators can test against their own numbers this season.
The full study is being presented in a live webinar on Tuesday, August 25 at 2:00 PM EST, and registrants receive a copy afterward. Registration and the full announcement are available from Business Wire.
About Minty
Minty is an AI shopping companion that surfaces savings for shoppers and builds loyalty for the e-commerce brands they buy from. The company describes itself as the pioneer of Proactive Commerce, reaching hundreds of millions of shoppers, and G2 ranks it a top five commerce tool for generating incremental revenue from high-intent shoppers without disrupting a brand’s existing marketing channels. Minty also offers a Minty app for ChatGPT.
Shoppers can find Minty at minty.com. Brands and advertisers can reach the company at business.minty.com.
