Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the most crucial retail shopping weekend to kick off the holiday shopping blitz. Banks, credit cards, and deep discounts from online outlets made the Black Friday and Cyber Monday online buying experience this year surpass all expectations. $9.8 billion in the U.S. and nearly $71 billion worldwide have been reported before Cyber Monday begins.
The $5.6B consumers spent on Thanksgiving Day was up 5.5% over last year. Salesforce reported that mobile phones carried out 79% of browsing and buying, with $5.3 billion in sales — up 10% over 2022. Desktop sales usually carry the day on Black Friday, but 51% of sales were mobile this year.
Adobe, working with hundreds of online retailers of all sizes, predicted that “Cyber Week” from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday (today) will blaze to $37.2 billion in online sales and provide its Cyber Monday savings time. This calculation was based on the more than one trillion visits to U.S. retailer sites.
“Black Friday online sales performance exceeded any retail executive’s expectations. Retailers stepped up their discounting game and shoppers, in turn, clicked the buy button.” –Rob Garf, Salesforce
With some talk of a recession — this weekend has been a bright light in the season. Inflation that has been just over 3% is down on last year’s 7%, but there is still some uncertainty. Other kinds of credit, such as buy now pay later, are options that have always helped sales growth, and the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals are no different. More U.S. shoppers have used the buy now, pay later debt for Cyber Monday this season.
“The scale of the adoption (of BNPL) has just gotten so big. It’s become really, really, really popular,” said Dan Dolev, an analyst at Mizuho Securities.
It was anticipated that this holiday season would be much slower than in former years due to higher interest rates and inflation. Klarna reported that about half of the people they surveyed worried they would not be able to pay off their holiday spending.
Featured Image Credit: Photo by Karolina Grabowska; Pexels
