Online spending and shopper turnout across the Cyber Week from Thanksgiving Day to Cyber Monday were down year-over-year, but the holiday season remains on track as data shows that shoppers began their holiday shopping early due to supply chain concerns.
Adobe
ADBE
data shows the five-day period resulted in $33.9 billion in online spending, down 1.4% year-over-year.
Cyber Monday ended the day with $10.7 billion in online sales, also down 1.4% from the previous year. Despite the decline, it’s still the biggest online shopping day of the year.
Thanksgiving Day sales were flat at $5.1 billion, and Black Friday sales finished at $8.9 billion after $9 billion in sales in 2020.
“With early deals in October, consumers were not waiting around for discounts on big shopping days like Cyber Monday and Black Friday,” said Taylor Schreiner, director at Adobe Digital Insights, in a statement. “This was further fueled by growing awareness of supply chain challenges and product availability.”
Online sales from Nov. 1 through Nov. 29 are up 11.9% from last year, reaching $109.8 billion.
National Retail Federation data also showed a drop in the number of shoppers that participated in the five-day shopping extravaganza, with 179.8 million unique shoppers heading online or to bricks-and-mortar locations, down from 186.4 million shoppers in 2020. In 2019, that figure was 189.6 million.
The number of shoppers in stores was up to 104.9 million, up from 92.3 million in 2020.
The trade group says the average shopper spent $301.27 down from $311.75 in 2020.
Even with the declines, NRF Chief Executive Matt Shay remained upbeat on a call with media. The organization maintains expectations for the shopping season’s final tally to be between $843.4 billion and $859 billion, up between 8.5% and 10.5% from 2020.
“[W]e remain in somewhat unfamiliar territory,” Shay said on the call. Still, he said CEOs have expressed a high level of confidence in the holiday season during conversations.
Also: U.S. consumer confidence sinks to 9-month low on inflation and Covid worries
Numerator data shows that Amazon.com Inc
AMZN.
was the big Black Friday winner, with 17.7% of overall sales on that day. The research company found that 54% of shoppers were mostly or completely done with their holiday shopping before the calendar reached Cyber Monday.
Amazon said Black Friday and Cyber Monday were record breakers with items like Apple
AAPL
AirPods and the company’s own Echo Dot among the bestsellers. For the season so far, Olaplex
OLPX
No. 7 Bonding Oil, board games like Monopoly and Candy Land, both Hasbro
HAS
items, and holiday décor items have been popular.
The SPDR S&P Retail ETF
XRT
has gained 45% for the year to date. The Amplify Online Retail ETF
IBUY
is down 14.6%. And the benchmark S&P 500 index
SPX
has gained 22.1% for the period.
This post was originally published on Market Watch
