An avalanche of deep discounts and the growth of flexible payment options were the drivers of $9.800 billion in online sales in the United States during Black Friday, a record number. According to Adobe Analytics, sales increased 7,5% over last year's figures.
Sales easily surpassed Thanksgiving numbers and growth rate, as well as Adobe's own predictions. American consumers spent $5.600 billion on Thursday, an increase of 5,5%. Analysts initially predicted sales of $9.600 billion for Black Friday.
Salesforce, which uses different metrics than Adobe and says that build your numbers on transactions of some 1.500 billion consumers, also stated that Black Friday online sales exceeded its expectations. They totaled $16.400 billion in the United States and $70.900 billion globally, and a record 79% of all shopping and browsing traffic was via mobile phones.
Black Friday is an emblematic shopping day, seen for years as the day on which the Christmas sales period begins, the most important for retail trade. These figures will bring some surprise Christmas cheer to retailers, who have been experiencing generally sluggish growth. According to figures from the US Census Bureau, retail sales last quarter grew only 2,3% compared to the same period last year. He E-commerce, which represents a younger and smaller proportion (around 15% of all sales), typically grows faster and last quarter also grew around 7%.
"Black Friday's online sales performance exceeded any retail executive's expectations," Rob Garf, vice president and general manager of retail at Salesforce, said in a statement. “Retailers stepped up their discounts and shoppers, in turn, clicked the buy button.”
Adobe works with hundreds of online retailers large and small and says it bases its estimates on more than 1 billion visits to U.S. retail sites, the movement of about 100 million SKUs and 18 product categories.
Inflation of just over 3% is definitely lower than last year (when it topped 7%), but economic uncertainty continues to weigh on consumers, so it's notable that buy now, pay later options such as complement to other types of credit, continued to grow in popularity. Adobe said that orders using BNPL increased 72% from last year during the week leading up to Black Friday, and that BNPL revenue as a result increased by $79 million during that period.
The big question will be whether retailers can maintain the growth rate over the next few weeks. The next big barometer-style sales day is Cyber Monday. It will be an interesting full view to fill out the figures.
Some other notable details:
- The discounts continue to be a big driver of sales and reach up to 35% of the retail price. The prominent group continues to be buying gifts and electronic devices for the home.
- The Smartphones accounted for $5.300 billion in sales that day, a huge increase of 10,4% compared to 2022 and represent 54% of all online sales. Adobe predicts that will be the norm for the period: Mobile device sales will actually surpass desktop this holiday season, he said, at more than 51% of sales.
— Maybe because people are still worried about spending, they are choosing to cheaper “standard” shipping more frequently than in previous years. (And, frankly, why get something faster now if it's for a gift by the end of December?) Adobe said that 80,5% of all orders used standard shipping.
— Adobe believes that “Cyber Week” (from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday) will accumulate $37.200 billion in sales online in the United States, almost 17% of all sales during the Christmas period. Salesforce is more optimistic: Says it will account for 25% of all holiday shopping this year and total $53 billion globally.
"Black Friday reaffirmed its dominance this season with record spending of $9.800 billion driven by new demand for the biggest sales day," Vivek Pandya, principal analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, said in a statement. “The drop in online prices over the last year has created a favorable environment for consumers with steep discounts this season that are tempting even the most price-conscious consumers.”
