Cyber Monday spending hits all-time record
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U.S. shoppers pounced on deep online discounts during Cyber Monday to set a new spending record, according to data from Adobe Analytics.
Driving the news: Americans rang up $12.4 billion worth of online purchases, up 9.6% from last year.
- Online spending during the five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday was up 7.8% year-over-year, totaling $38 billion.
- The new Cyber Monday record comes days after Americans set a new Black Friday online spending record, shelling out $9.8 billion — a 7.5% jump from last year, Adobe Analytics data shows.
Zoom out: Government data showed retail behavior pulled back slightly in October, suggesting that consumers were waiting for deals to launch around Thanksgiving as they started to feel worse about the economy and to expect softening inflation to reverse course.
What they're saying: "The 2023 holiday shopping season began with a lot of uncertainty," Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, said in a statement.
- "The record online spending across Cyber Week, however, shows the impact that discounts can have on consumer demand, especially with quality products that drove a lot of impulse shopping."
Be smart: E-commerce sales don't tell the whole story.
- The segment makes up less than 16% of U.S. retail sales.
- The National Retail Federation separately reported on Tuesday that more than 200 million people shopped online and in-person during the five day period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday — exceeding last year's record number of 196 million.
- On average, 55% of Thanksgiving weekend shopping was driven by sales and promotions, up from 52% last year, according to NRF.
Of note: Thanksgiving fell early this year, which may have boosted numbers. Same goes for "favorable" weather, according to NRF president and CEO Matthew Shay.
The global picture: Bargain hunting is a popular sport for consumers around the world.
- Stripe, a company that helps process payments online, set up a live tracker that showed more than $18.6 billion worth of transactions had been processed between Black Friday and Cyber Monday worldwide.
What to watch: Holiday shoppers say they still have about half of their holiday shopping left between now and the end of the year and will continue to bargain hunt, according to Shay.
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