Shoppers in the USA flocked to websites and stores over the long ‘Black Friday’ holiday weekend, setting new sales records and generating more deliveries than ever, and are poised for another all-time high during today’s Cyber Monday.
US consumers increased their online spending by nearly 18% to $5.27 billion on Thanksgiving Day last Thursday and Black Friday (November 25), with Black Friday sales up nearly 22% at $3.34 billion, according to a data survey from technology firm Adobe. Mobile sales soared by 33% to $1.2 billion on Black Friday, thus representing more than one third of total online sales, the firm said.
Adobe has already predicted that Cyber Monday sales will rise about 9.4% to more than $3 billion this year, while the overall 2016 holiday season will see an 11% increase to total online sales of $91.6 billion.
The company stressed that its Black Friday report was based on aggregated and anonymous data from 22.6 billion visits to retail websites. Adobe measures 80% of all online transactions from the top 100 U.S. retailers and claims that 75% of online spending with the top 500 U.S. retailers goes through its Adobe Marketing Cloud service, enabling it to deliver highly accurate figures.
Meanwhile, more than 154 million Americans were expected to shop online and offline over the long weekend starting on Thanksgiving Day last Thursday and including Black Friday (November 25), up slightly from 151 million last year, according to a representative consumer survey by Prosper Insights & Analytics for the National Retail Forum (NRF) over the weekend.
However, average spending per person over the Thanksgiving weekend totalled $289.19, down slightly from $299.60 last year. About 74% of the average spend – $214.13 – was dedicated to buying presents, according to the survey which asked 4,330 consumers about Thanksgiving weekend shopping plans and was conducted on November 25 – 26.
The survey found that 44% went online and 40% shopped in-store. The most popular day to shop online was Black Friday, up 1.3% from last year to 74%, followed by Saturday (49%), Thanksgiving (36%), and Sunday (34%).
Some of the most popular gifts purchased over the weekend included clothing or clothing accessories (50%), toys (32%), electronics (30%), books, CDs, DVDs, videos or video games (28%), and gift cards (20%).
Millennials (ages 18 – 34) continued to drive the increase in shopping during Thanksgiving Weekend. Eight in 10 shopped over the weekend, of which 25-34-year olds shopped the most in store (56%) and online (62%). According to the survey, 56% of smartphone owners and 53% of tablet owners used their devices to assist with weekend shopping activities.
Meanwhile, about 122 million US consumers also plan to shop online today, slightly more than last year’s 121 million, according to the NRF survey. More than 28 million people, or 23% of Cyber Monday shoppers, plan to shop for Cyber Monday deals from their mobile device this year, about even with last year’s 29.6 million. More than eight in 10— 98.6 million people, will use their computers at home to shop on Monday, while 11.2 million will shop from their computers at work.
Amazon has not yet announced any sales figures for the weekend. Last year it sold more than 54 million items worldwide on Cyber Monday and expects to increase this figure in 2016.
Among the main US carriers, the US Postal Service said today that it is ready to deliver record volumes of Cyber Monday purchases. Overall, the Postal Service will handle approximately 750 million packages this holiday season, an increase of more than 12% over last year.
