ECON Cyber Monday Sales Hit Record $11.3B, Fueled By Deep Discounts

[Blacknarwhal]

Apparently the credit cards found a second wind.

Fair use cited so on and so forth.

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Cyber Monday Sales Hit Record $11.3B, Fueled By Deep Discounts​

by Tyler Durden
Tuesday, Nov 29, 2022 - 07:45 PM

Thanks to deeper than expected discounts, Cyber Monday set new records yesterday - with online retailers pulling in $11.2 billion in sales, a 5.1% jump over 2021 when $10.7 billion of sales were recorded, according to figures from tracking firm Adobe Analytics.

The figure tops Black Friday, which saw $9.12 billion in sales - while Thanksgiving saw $5.29 billion in sales. There was roughly $9.55 billion in sales over the weekend on top of that. Altogether, "Cyber Week" is expected to reach $35.27 billion in online sales, up 4% over last year. The week accounts for 16.7% of all sales in November and December, according to TechCrunch.

Via Adobe
And as we noted on Monday, the record sales were underpinned by record discounts - with electronics, toys and apparel leading the charge. Discounts on electronics were as high as 25% (vs 8% in 2021), while toys had an average discount of 34%.

Followed by televisions, sporting goods, computers, furniture and appliances. Top products included games, gaming consoles, Legos, Hatchimals, Disney Encanto, Pokémon cards, Bluey, Dyson products, strollers, Apple Watches, drones, and digital cameras, according to the report (via TechCrunch).

More via Techrunch:

Adobe expects $210 billion in sales for the two months, and so far in the season mobile has accounted for 44% of sales.
Salesforce separately released its own preliminary figures of $6 billion for Cyber Monday in the evening Monday. We'll update these as we get more complete results.
Notably, although inflation is definitely being felt in the U.S., Adobe said that these figures were based on more transactions overall. At the peak, people were spending $12.8 million per minute on Monday, and Adobe said that its digital price index, which tracks prices across 18 categories, said that prices have been nearly flat in recent months.
Deep discounts -- retailers perhaps anticipating needing to have something more to lure shoppers -- have played a big role, too, as have the sheer availability of goods after shortages of the years before.

"With oversupply and a softening consumer spending environment, retailers made the right call this season to drive demand through heavy discounting," according to Adobe Digital Insights lead analyst, Vivek Pandya. "It spurred online spending to levels that were higher than expected, and reinforced e-commerce as a major channel to drive volume and capture consumer interest."

As far as buying trends, buy-now-pay-later transactions (BNPL) were down slightly on Cbyer Monday vs Black Friday and the weekend. According to Adobe, people tend to use BNPL when the overall shopping cart size is higher.

 

[Kris Gandillon]

Mastercard SpendingPulse, which measures online and in-store retail sales across multiple forms of payment, stated total Black Friday year-over-year U.S. sales rose 12%, excluding automotive.

 

[desert_fox]

Show me volume sales. I guarantee they were down. Inflation making things smell rosy.

 

[WalknTrot]

I bought a couple of things cheap online..an outdoor-grade remote plug strip and a good set of noise-cancelling Bluetooth headphones for mowing - but that's it. Not much was deeply discounted that had any practical value.

I'm guessing Black Friday brick and mortar was down significantly, and that's why online sales were up.

 

[Blacknarwhal]

I bought a couple of things cheap online..an outdoor-grade remote plug strip and a good set of noise-cancelling Bluetooth headphones for mowing - but that's it. Not much was deeply discounted that had any practical value.

I'm guessing Black Friday brick and mortar was down significantly, and that's why online sales were up.

Brick and mortar was WAY down. I posted on another thread, I went looking for "Black Friday fights" just to see what was going on. The first two results returned are news pieces from the "Bay Area", which I guess is San Francisco, and St. Louis. Both pieces described a complete lack of shoppers lined up early Friday morning.

 

[20Gauge]

We went out as it was the 1st time the Wife had off on a Friday in years. Nobody was shopping.

What little we did was on line and we were done.

 

[PghPanther]

(cue up the drum roll)....................the total amount of money I spend on the Christmas holiday.

answer (add the cymbal crash).............$0.00

 

[kyrsyan]

Spending may have hit a record high. But with deep discounts, so likely that profit did not hit record highs. And if spending hit record highs because of those discounts, it's likely that the rest of the spending in this season will be low.

I'm already getting emails from companies who keep "extending" their black friday deals.

 

[Kris Gandillon]

Black Friday sales up this year on the back of e-commerce spending​

Black Friday sales up this year on the back of e-commerce spending

Apparel, electronics, and restaurants saw the biggest sales bumps this year.

www.retailbrew.com

Black Friday sales were up this year, but not entirely because of the stampedes of customers that are synonymous with the shopping holiday.

With inflation and fears over a looming recession, retailers leaned heavily on promotions throughout this year, and that carried over into Black Friday—both in-store and online.

US retail sales were up 12% YoY, according Mastercard SpendingPulse. In-store sales specifically increased 12%, while e-commerce sales saw a 14% YoY bump.

• Apparel, electronics, and restaurants were the strongest categories with 19%, 4%, and 21% increases, respectively.

“With holiday promotions kicking off long before the Thanksgiving weekend, consumers have been shopping strategically for the season’s best deals,” said Michelle Meyer, North America chief economist at the Mastercard Economics Institute. "Retailers delivered on Black Friday with deals that enticed consumers to fill their carts despite the inflationary environment."
E-commerce also flexed its muscles this year, as sales reached $9.12 billion, according to Adobe Analytics. This was a record number for the day—outpacing Adobe’s expectations—and a 2.3% increase from 2021.

• As TechCrunch notes, however, Adobe doesn’t break out volumes, so the increases can’t be pegged to neither higher-cost items nor more purchases.

Visits to shopping malls, outlets, and open-air lifestyle centers were down YoY, but outpaced average visits throughout the year.

• Visits to indoor malls during Black Friday were up 261% compared to the daily average for the first three quarters of 2022, according to Placer.ai. Outlet malls and open-air lifestyle centers saw visits up 366% and 151%, respectively.
• Compared to Black Friday 2021, visits were down 2.3% at indoor malls, down 3.9% at outlets, and down 0.5% at open-air lifestyle centers.

“The data serves as the latest indication of the ongoing decline of Black Friday’s centrality,” Ethan Chernofsky, VP of marketing at Placer.ai, said in a statement. “Nonetheless, the day did still drive a massive surge in visits with some retailers seeing increases of 300% or more on the average daily visits in November in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving.”

 

[Hfcomms]

Show me volume sales. I guarantee they were down. Inflation making things smell rosy.

And of course very quietly in January they will 'revise' their figures when the final numbers come in. Figures lie and liars figure. A whole lot of gaslighting going on but I sure don't see very many people with money to spend on nonessentials anymore. There is a reason why Amazon and others are laying people off and closing distribution centers and its not because everything is so rosy out there.

 

[subnet]

I didnt see anything with a "wow i gotta buy that" price.

 

[EMICT]

Bought two 50” 4K Roku TV’s for $148 each online, delivered from the brick and mortar the next day. I’m not sure how this is counted. Online sales, brick and mortar sales, or both.

 

[Kris Gandillon]

We can tell where the payment transaction came in from device-wise and physical location but in general if it is a register / POS it is counted as brick and mortar, if it originated from a website, smart device or call center it is online.