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.
Write to [email protected]
Read the full article here
