Shoppers carry Macy’s bags during Black Friday in New York on Nov. 24, 2023, the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season.
AFP via Getty Images
Early Black Friday sales data pointed to a healthy start to the holiday shopping season—at least online.
Despite industry expectations for slowing retail sales growth overall this year,
Adobe
said Black Friday online sales in the U.S. reached a record $9.8 billion on Black Friday, a 7.5% year-over-year increase. The analytics firm expects consumers to spend another $10 billion to be spent over the weekend and $12 billion on Cyber Monday.
Online sales reached $70.9 billion globally, an 8% increase from Black Friday last year, according to data from
Salesforce.
Black Friday global online sales were $65.3 billion last year.
In the U.S., online sales increased 9% to $16.4 billion globally, according to the Salesforce data. A Salesforce spokesperson said the figures beat what the company was expecting.
Adobe said electronics were a major growth driver this year, and called out smartwatches, TVs, and audio equipment as popular purchases. Other hot sellers included toys such as Barbie Fashionista dolls and KidKraft play sets; gaming consoles such as the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X; and videos Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and Super Mario Bros. Wonder.
Footwear, health and beauty, skincare, and sporting goods were all high-performing categories this year, Salesforce said.
Shopify,
which counts both online and offline sales from its merchants, said global sales increased 22% year over year to a record $4.1 billion.
The data follow on a solid Thanksgiving Day performance for retailers. Adobe estimated that a record $5.6 billion was spent online on Thursday, up 5.5% year over year.
And the shopping weekend isn’t over. Adobe sees another $10 billion in U.S. sales across Saturday and Sunday, with Cyber Monday bringing in a record $12 billion. Shoppers were expected to do about a sixth of all their online holiday shopping between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday.
Last year, Salesforce saw a total of $281 billion in global online sales and $68 billion in the U.S. across what it calls Cyber Week, the period between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Salesforce projects a 1% increase in U.S. Cyber Week online sales this year and a 4% increase globally.
The data don’t give a clear picture into what’s happening on the ground at the bricks-and-mortar operations of big retailers like
Best Buy,
Target,
Nordstrom,
and
Kohl’s.
Recent earnings from those companies have shown a slowdown in sales.
And the National Retail Federation predicted that total holiday sales growth will slow this year to a rate of 3% to 4%, between $957.3 billion and $966.6 billion. That’d be the smallest increase since 2019 when sales grew 3.8%.
Shoppers are expected to do a lot more of their shopping online this year. A Deloitte study found that 61% of shoppers’ Black Friday budgets will be spent online this year, a two-percentage point increase over last year.
Those purchases are being made on shoppers’ phones. Salesforce said 79% of digital visits to websites this year came from mobile phones, a record high in mobile traffic. Adobe said mobile shopping accounted for $5.3 billion of Black Friday’s online sales—54% of all online sales.
Shoppers are also relying more on flexible payment methods, also known as Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL). Adobe noted that BNPL orders rose 72% week over week from Nov. 18 to Nov. 24. BNPL revenue increased 47% in that period, Adobe said.
Consumers and their budgets might feel more stretched this year. Still-hot inflation, higher interest rates, the resumption of student loan payments, and fears about an economic downturn are headwinds for shoppers, Barron’s has said.
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