Summary U.S. shoppers are looking for the best online deals and discounts before Cyber Monday, the biggest online shopping day of the year. Data from different sources show that shoppers are smart and patient, waiting for the right time to buy the best-value products.
Cyber Monday is the first Monday after Thanksgiving, and online retailers are offering big promotions to attract customers. Rob Garf, a retail expert at Salesforce, said that shoppers were not impressed by the early deals this year, but they won the game of “discount chicken” on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Retailers increased their discounts to about 30% on average in the U.S., and shoppers spent $16.4 billion online in the U.S. and $70.9 billion globally on that day, according to Salesforce.
Garf said that the strong online spending on Black Friday would boost the total sales for the whole of Cyber Week, which started on Tuesday and ends on Monday. He also said that Salesforce expects the same level of discounts on Cyber Monday, but shoppers may risk missing out on some products if they wait too long.
Walmart.com showed a notice on Sunday afternoon that said “Limited quantities, while supplies last.” It also gave a “sneak peek” at some of the discounted products, such as Bluetooth wireless headphones for $9.88. Walmart said that it would start its “Cyber Monday Deals” on Sunday at 7 p.m. ET and that it would give “early access” to some of the discounted items for its Walmart + members, who pay $98 a year.
Salesforce gets its data from its Commerce Cloud e-commerce service, which tracks the behavior of 1.5 billion people in 60 countries on thousands of e-commerce sites.
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Other companies use different methods to measure online shopping trends.
Adobe Analytics predicts that shoppers will spend a record $12 billion on Monday, 5.4% more than last year, making it the largest-ever e-commerce shopping day in the U.S. Retailers will offer average discounts of 30% on electronics, and 19% on furniture, said Vivek Pandya, an analyst at Adobe Digital Insights.
Pandya said that shoppers who wait until Monday evening could spend $4 billion between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET, because they may worry that the discounts will go down after that.
Adobe provides merchants with Experience Cloud, a service that powers their e-commerce platforms and gives Adobe access to transaction data from 85% of the top 100 internet retailers.
Pandya said that shoppers are very strategic, and want to shop when they think they will get the best discounts. He said that online retail is one of the few sectors where the consumer has more control, especially with toys and seasonal holiday products. He said that shoppers can easily compare prices among many online merchants.
Mastercard, which tracks retail sales across all payment methods, said that e-commerce sales rose 8.5% on Black Friday, while in-store sales rose 1%.
Steve Sadove, a senior adviser for Mastercard and former CEO of Saks Inc., said that digital sales grew a lot during the pandemic, but then slowed down when people went back to stores. He said that now digital sales are picking up again, and becoming more important.
