Thanksgiving Day Online Sales Surprise With 3% YoY Uptick to $5.3B: Adobe
Thanksgiving Day online sales were higher than expected, reported Adobe Digital Insights Friday. The analytics firm had projected a 1% dip in Thursday sales from Thanksgiving 2021 (see 2211230004), but Friday the analytics firm reported a 2.9% year-on-year uptick to $5.29 billion. Higher figures were driven largely by heavy discounting, emailed analyst Vivek Pandya Friday. Shoppers were enticed by big discounts in toys and electronics, he said. The “surprising” higher spend levels showed “resilient consumer demand,” he said.
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Mobile purchases hit a record high for Thanksgiving Day, rising 8.3% from Thanksgiving ’21, at 55% of online sales, Adobe said. “Mobile shopping had struggled to grow for many years, as consumers found the experience lacking compared to desktop,” said Pandya. He called Thanksgiving ’22 “an inflection point, where smartphones drove real growth and highlights how much these experiences have improved.”
In the Friday update, Adobe said Black Friday was still on track to bring in $9 billion online, a 1% rise from last year, and Cyber Monday will reach $11.2 billion, about a 5.1% year on year increase. Adobe continued to project a $34.8 billion online spend from Thanksgiving through Monday. The higher-than-expected Thanksgiving sales “should not impact these numbers,” Pandya said.
Among the biggest expected Black Friday discounts were electronics (27%), computers (18%) and TVs (13%), but Adobe expected the best deals in those categories to top out over the weekend. Pandya encouraged computer shoppers to wait for Cyber Monday “when discounts are expected to peak at 27%.” Discounts on appliances were expected to hover around 14% on Black Friday.
In addition to the top three game consoles -- Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X -- top sellers for Thanksgiving were Apple Airpods, Instapots, smart TVs, digital cameras and gift cards, Adobe said. Digital camera sales were up 111% year on year; speaker sales rose 122%.
The uncertain economic environment contributed to an uptick in buy now, pay later (BNPL) payments, with Thanksgiving BNPL revenue up 1.3% online, Adobe said. BNPL orders grew 0.7%. The analytics firm expects BNPL usage to ramp up over the five-day Cyber days shopping span.
Curbside pickup was used in 13% of online orders on Thanksgiving for retailers that offer the service, a 21% year-on-year drop. Pandya attributed the falloff to the impact of Thanksgiving store closures. Adobe expects curbside pickup to peak Dec. 22-Dec. 23 and account for 35% of all orders.