FILE PHOTO: Boxes ready to be delivered are seen during Cyber Monday at the Amazon fulfilment centre in Robbinsville Township in New Jersey, U.S., November 28, 2022. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
NEW YORK: Holiday shoppers in the United States are seeking out the best deals and strategically nabbing the deepest discounts ahead of Cyber Monday, according to data from retailer websites aggregated by third parties.
Cyber Monday, as the first Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday has become known as merchants step up online promotions, is set to be the biggest online shopping day of the year in the United States.
Strong online traffic on Black Friday demonstrated a notable pattern of shoppers putting time and effort into selecting the lowest-cost, best-value merchandise, said Rob Garf, vice-president and general manager for retail at Salesforce, which tracks data flowing through its Commerce Cloud eCommerce service.
Despite an earlier start to retailers’ holiday promotions this year, there weren’t a lot of great deals initially, Garf said.
Yet “consumers were patient, diligent, and they played a game of discount chicken. And they won once again.”
On Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, retailers “stepped up the discounting” to roughly 30% on average in the United States, he said.
And “consumers clicked the buy button,” spending US$16.4bil online in the United States and US$70.9bil globally that day, according to Salesforce.
“We saw a big spike,” Garf said, adding that the strong Black Friday online outlay would “pull up” the overall tally for the entire Cyber Week, which started on Tuesday and ends on Monday.
On Cyber Monday, Salesforce expects to see discounts averaging 30% again.
The risk for consumers, however, is that products may not be available if they wait, he said.
Salesforce said it derives its benchmarks for online traffic and spending from data flowing through its Commerce Cloud eCommerce service, which it said provides a window into the behaviour of 1.5 billion people in 60 countries traversing thousands of eCommerce sites.
Other firms use different measurements to gauge online shopping patterns.
Rival Adobe Analytics forecast that shoppers would spend a record US$12bil yesterday.
This was 5.4% more than last year, representing what it said would be the largest-ever eCommerce shopping day in the United States.
Retailers are set to dangle average price cuts of 30% on electronics, and 19% on furniture, said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights.
Last-minute Cyber Monday shoppers could spend US$4bil between 6pm and 11pm (New York time) alone “because consumers are going to be concerned about discounts weakening after that,” Pandya said.
Adobe provides merchants with Experience Cloud, a service which powers their eCommerce platforms, giving Adobe a window into aggregate transaction data at 85% of the top 100 Internet retailers.
“Overall, consumers are being very strategic, wanting to maximise their shopping when they think they’ll get the best discounts,” Pandya said.
“The online retail sector is one of the few where the consumer is a bit more in the driver’s seat,” he added, particularly with toys and seasonal holiday merchandise.
“There are a lot of online merchants vying for their dollar and they can easily compare prices,” the Adobe Digital Insights analyst added.
Mastercard, which measures retail sales across all forms of payment, said eCommerce sales rose 8.5% on Black Friday, while in-store sales rose 1%.
“Digital grew dramatically during the pandemic and then it had a reversion to the mean, when people went back to stores,” said Steve Sadove, senior adviser for Mastercard and former chief executive officer of Saks Inc.
“Now you are seeing an acceleration in digital, once again.
“It’s becoming more important.” — Reuters
