Sarah Halzack reports in the Chicago Tribune:
The idea of starting your online shopping on the Monday after Thanksgiving is a vestige of the pre-smartphone era. Social media mentions of Cyber Monday have fallen a staggering 82 percent compared with last year. 108.5 million people shopped online over the holiday weekend, compared with 103 million last year. A record $3.34 billion was spent online on Black Friday, up 21.6 percent from the previous year.
While retailers have been deluging customers for days now with a steady stream of holiday shopping promotions, shoppers still came out in droves for Cyber Monday, with early data showing that e-commerce sales for the day were on track to soar 9.4 percent over last year.
As of Monday morning, some $540 million had already been spent online, according to Adobe, whose software runs under many retailers' websites.
And while Cyber Monday has long reigned supreme as the biggest day of the year for digital shopping, it faced a stiff challenge from Black Friday this time around. Retailers were on track to pull down $3.36 billion online on Monday, which would just barely edge out the $3.34 billion spent Friday.
It perhaps should not come as a surprise that Black Friday sales figures are rivaling those of Cyber Monday. After all, the idea of starting your online shopping on the Monday after Thanksgiving is a vestige of the pre-smartphone era, of a time when people weren't able to do much digital browsing and buying until they parked themselves in their cubicles after a long weekend of travel and hanging out with family. This year, 55 percent of visits to retail websites on Black Friday were made from mobile devices, suggesting that swarms of shoppers got the digital spending spree started early. And retailers gave them plenty of reason to: Walmart started its Cyber Monday deals on Friday, and Target offered two days of Cyber Monday, with a "15 percent off your purchase" offer that was in place for Sunday and Monday.
For shoppers who missed the deals bonanza, it looks as though retailers still have a steady drumbeat of promotions planned for the coming days. The websites of Macy's and Target were touting a "Cyber Week" slate of deals, suggesting that Monday would hardly be the only day for scoring digital discounts. Consumers increasingly turned online during the Black Friday weekend, boosting traffic during the crucial start of the holiday shopping season.
These patterns may also help explain why social media mentions of Cyber Monday have fallen a staggering 82 percent compared with last year: People have already gotten their goods, or they're planning to hold out for the next round of discounts.
Cyber Monday's healthy sales come on the heels of a long weekend in which about 154 million shoppers made purchases at stores or on e-commerce sites, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF). That's a bump up from the 151 million people who last year participated in the annual barrage of Black Friday deals.
And though it is encouraging for the retail industry that more consumers bought things this time around, it wasn't all good news: Average spending per person was down to $289.19 from $299.60 in 2015.
Matt Shay, chief executive of the NRF, attributed the decline in spending to just how deep and broad the discounts were over the four-day weekend. While the promotions offered during this period were probably preplanned and thus baked into retailers' sales plans, it could prove a troublesome dynamic for them if ultra-deep discounts end up being needed all season to get people shopping.
But other factors could have contributed to the decline in per-person spending: Retailers have been spreading their Black Friday deals out over a longer stretch, so it's possible that many people pounced on offers several days before Thanksgiving arrived.
The survey results reflect the increasing importance of e-commerce in the retail landscape. This year, about 108.5 million people shopped online over the holiday weekend, compared with 103 million last year. Meanwhile, the number of people who shopped in stores fell to 99.1 million from 101 million last year.
Indeed, other data released this weekend offers evidence that online spending was strong on Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Adobe, which analyzed 22.6 billion visits to retail websites, reported that a record $3.34 billion was spent online on Black Friday, up 21.6 percent from the previous year. Sales on Thanksgiving were up 11.5 percent to $1.93 billion.
Adobe's research found that top-selling items included iPads, Samsung 4K televisions and toys such as Lego Creator sets and the Barbie Dreamhouse.
The NRF had projected that the retail industry would see a 3.6 percent increase in sales this holiday season over last year. That would be significantly better than the 3 percent growth registered in 2015. The trade group's chief economist, Jack Kleinhenz, said Sunday that he believes that prediction "holds up pretty well," even as some have asked whether the election results might have altered consumers' mind-sets.
0 comments:
Post a Comment