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Consumers in the United States are scouring the Internet for online deals to take advantage of the post-Thanksgiving Cyber Monday shopping marathon.
While e-commerce is now part of many people’s normal routines and holiday shopping season, Cyber Monday (a term coined by the National Retail Federation in 2005) is the year’s biggest online shopping season thanks to sales. It’s a shopping day. And the hype the industry has created to promote it.
Adobe Analytics, which tracks online shopping, predicts that consumers will spend a record $13.2 billion on Monday, an increase of 6.1% from last year. That would make it the biggest e-commerce shopping day of the season, and of the year. Consumers expect to spend a record $650 during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping events, up 15% from last year, according to a study by financial firm Deloitte.
For some major retailers, the Cyber Monday sale is a multi-day event that started over Thanksgiving weekend. Amazon launched the sales event just after midnight Pacific time on Saturday. A two-day discount offer on Target’s website and app began Sunday night. Walmart rolled out its Cyber Monday offer to Walmart+ members on Sunday afternoon and made it available to all customers three hours later at 8pm ET.
Many U.S. consumers are still experiencing sticker shock after post-pandemic inflation has made many goods and services more expensive than they were three years ago. However, retail sales remain strong and the economy continues to grow at a healthy pace.
At the same time, credit card debt and delinquencies are increasing. This holiday season, more shoppers than ever will be taking advantage of “buy now, pay later” plans. This allows you to delay paying for holiday decorations, gifts, and other items.
Many economists also warn that President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to impose tariffs on foreign goods coming into the United States next year will lead to higher prices for everything from food to clothing to cars.
The National Retail Federation expects holiday shoppers to spend more than last year, both in stores and online. But the industry group said the pace of growth in spending is expected to slow slightly, increasing by 2.5% to 3.5% in 2023, compared with 3.9% in 2023.
Spending patterns during the holiday season won’t be clear until the government releases holiday sales data, but preliminary data from other sources shows positive signs for retailers.
According to Adobe Analytics, U.S. shoppers spent $10.8 billion online on Black Friday, an increase of 10.2% year over year. That’s also more than double what consumers spent in 2017, when Black Friday brought in about $5 billion in online sales. According to Adobe, consumers spent a record $6.1 billion online on Thanksgiving.
Salesforce, a software company that also tracks online shopping, estimated that Black Friday online sales totaled $17.5 billion in the U.S. and $74.4 billion worldwide.
E-commerce platform Shopify announced that its merchants raised a record $5 billion in sales worldwide on Black Friday. The Canadian company said its peak sales were $4.6 million per minute, with top-grossing categories including clothing, cosmetics and fitness products.
Toys, electronics, home goods, self-care and beauty categories were the main drivers of holiday spending on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, according to Adobe. “Featured Products” include Lego sets, espresso machines, fitness trackers, makeup, skin care, and more.
Other data shows that foot traffic in brick-and-mortar stores has declined on Black Friday, with large numbers of shoppers once synonymous with the day after Thanksgiving now happy to shop from the comfort of their own homes. It became a relief.
RetailNext measures real-time store foot traffic and collected data showing Friday store foot traffic was down 3.2% year-over-year in the U.S., with the biggest drop in the Midwest.
Sensormatic Solutions, which also tracks store foot traffic, said its preliminary analysis showed retail foot traffic on Black Friday was down 8.2% compared to 2023.
Grant Gustafson, head of analytics at Sensormatic Solutions, noted that many retailers offered deep discounts around Black Friday, causing in-store traffic to be spread out over multiple days.
“Some of the extended Black Friday promotions actually resulted in a little bit calmer traffic on the day than we expected,” Gustafsson said.
Physical items like toys and electronics are always popular during the holiday season, but experts say consumers have become more “experiential spenders” in recent years, especially as the coronavirus pandemic subsides. It is pointed out that there is a shift to
Jie Zhang, a marketing professor at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, told The Associated Press ahead of the post-Thanksgiving shopping weekend that shoppers are “trying to be a little more personal” when it comes to their gifts. He said he hopes to have fun. .
Need to send a gift and make sure it arrives in time for the holiday season? Here are the shipping deadlines recommended by the U.S. Postal Service:
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