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The Black Friday online sales in the U.S. clocked a whopping $9.8 billion this year, exceeding last year’s numbers by 7.5%, as per Adobe Analytics.
As per Salesforce, which uses totally different metrics than Adobe, the US Black Friday sales stand at $16.4 billion, with the global figures close to $70.9 billion.
Retailers stepped up their discounting game, and shoppers, in turn, clicked the buy button.Rob Garf, VP and GM of Retail at Salesforce
This comes as refreshing news for retailers who have been reeling under inflation and uncertain economic conditions for quite some time now.
As per U.S. Census Bureau, last quarter’s sales increased by a meager 2.3% as compared to the same quarter last year. Similarly, e-commerce sales grew by just 7%.
Reasons For The Increase
A major reason behind these record sales is the decrease in inflation from 7% last year to just 3% now. Plus, the availability of various finance options, such as Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) has helped consumers make purchases more freely.
Vivek Pandya, Adobe Digital Insights’ lead analyst, believes that the decline in online prices over the last year, coupled with strong season discounts, has driven massive sales this holiday season.
As per Adobe Analytics, BNPL orders increased by a massive 72% during the Black Friday week as compared to last year, with the BNPL revenue clocking $79 million.
Huge discounts are obviously one of the biggest sales drivers with retailers offering as high as 35% discount on products.
As per Salesforce, 79% of all sales were carried out through smartphones.
Smartphones constitute 54% of all online sales, with $5.3 billion worth of sales — 10.4% more than the last year. Experts believe that this will be the trend going forward to Cyber Monday, and smartphone sales will end up being more than 51% of total holiday season sales.
According to Adobe predictions, “Cyber Week” is expected to garner 17% of the total holiday season sales, with $37.2 billion in U.S. online sales alone. Salesforce believes this figure to reach around the 25% mark, with $53 billion in global sales.
With Cyber Monday around the corner, it remains to be seen how these predictions play out. Regardless of this, it has already been a great holiday sales season for both sellers and consumers, and Cyber Monday will only make it better.
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