While the holiday season seems to start earlier every year, the official shopping season started on Black Friday.
In recent years, Black Friday, the most American of made up holidays, has extended itself to Cyber Monday, a day for Americans to stay inside and shop for deals from the comfort of their internet enabled devices.
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As online shopping in general has grown more popular, so too has Cyber Monday. After peaking at 16.5% of total sales in 2020, e-commerce retail sales were at about 15.6% of all sales in the third quarter this year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Consumers spent $12.4 billion on Cyber Monday this year, a 9.6% increase from last year, according to Adobe. They spent $15.7 million every minute during the peak of the online shipping frenzy between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. Eastern time.
There's a reason people flock to their laptops for Cyber Monday, with deals on electronics peaking at 31% off, furniture sales peaking about 20% and apparel prices down 23% during the shopping holiday, according to Adobe.
Cyber Week — the time between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday — shoppers spent $38 billion, a 7.8% increase year-over-year.
Retailers have been bracing for a soft holiday quarter thanks to the several economic indicators that suggest the American public is struggling under high interest rates and stubbornly high inflation.
"The 2023 holiday shopping season began with a lot of uncertainty, as consumers shifted their spending to services, while dealing with rising costs across different facets of their lives,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst, Adobe Digital Insights.
“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.”
But U.S. consumers are also relying on increasingly popular economic tools like buy now pay later to afford these trinkets despite their tightening budgets.
Buy now pay later usage hit an all-time high on Cyber Monday, contributing $940 million in online spend, a 42.5% year over year jump. Buy now pay later has driven a total of $8.3 billion in sales since the start of November, a 17% increase from last year.
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