Shoppers turned out in big numbers for Black Friday, spending billions of dollars in stores and online, despite wider economic uncertainty hovering above this year’s holiday season.
US consumers on Friday spent a record US$11.8 billion online, a 9.1 percent jump from last year, said Adobe Analytics, which tracks e-commerce.
Traffic particularly piled up between the hours of 10am and 2pm local time nationwide, when US$12.5 million passed through online shopping carts every minute.
Photo: AP
Consumers also spent a record US$6.4 billion online on Thanksgiving Day, Adobe said.
Top categories that saw an uptick in sales across both days included video game consoles, electronics and home appliances.
Shopping services powered by artificial intelligence and social media advertising have also particularly influenced what consumers choose to buy, the firm said.
Meanwhile, software company Salesforce Inc — which tracks digital spending from a range of retailers, including grocers — estimated that Black Friday online sales totaled US$18 billion in the US and US$79 billion globally.
E-commerce platform Shopify Inc said its merchants raked in a record US$6.2 billion in sales worldwide on Black Friday.
At its peak, sales reached US$5.1 million per minute — with top categories including cosmetics and clothing, the Canadian company said.
Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks in-person and online spending, reported that overall Black Friday sales excluding automotive rose 4.1 percent from a year earlier.
The retail sales indicator, which is not adjusted for inflation, showed online sales jumped by 10.4 percent, while in-store purchases inched up 1.7 percent.
Consumers are “navigating an uncertain environment” this holiday season “by shopping early, leveraging promotions and investing in wish-list items,” Mastercard Economics Institute chief economist Michelle Meyer said.
Black Friday is far from the sales event that created midnight mall crowds or doorbuster mayhem just decades ago. More consumers have instead turned to online deals to make post-Thanksgiving purchases from the comfort of their homes — or opt to stretch out spending across longer promotions offered by retailers.
“Black Friday has really turned into like a full week event, or even further,” Sensormatic Solutions retail consulting and analytics head Grant Gustafson said.
“Black Friday is really the start of just a really and critical stretch for retailers,” he said, adding that the weekend following Thanksgiving, as well as the days leading up to Christmas, would also be some of the busiest in terms of in-store traffic.
In terms of e-commerce, Adobe expects US shoppers to spend another US$5.5 billion on Saturday and US$5.9 billion on Sunday — before reaching an estimated US$14.2 billion peak on Cyber Monday, which would mark yet another record.
Still, rising prices could be contributing to some of those numbers.
US President Donald Trump’s barrage of tariffs on foreign imports have strained businesses and households alike over the last year, and despite spending more overall, Salesforce found US shoppers purchased fewer items at checkout on Black Friday (down 2 percent from last year).
Order volumes also slipped 1 percent, as average selling prices climbed 7 percent, the firm said.
For the November-December holiday season overall, the National Retail Federation estimates that US shoppers would spend more than US$1 trillion for the first time this year.
However, the rate of growth is slowing, with an anticipated increase of 3.7 percent to 4.2 percent year-on-year, compared with 4.3 percent in last year’s holiday season.
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