On Black Friday (November 25), the largest shopping segment in the U.S., Americans flocked online instead of lining up at the store’s door as usual. On Black Friday, U.S. online shopping sales recorded the largest ever.
According to CNBC on the 26th (local time), data analysis company Adobe Analytics said that U.S. e-commerce sales rose 2.3% from the previous year to $9.12 billion the day before Black Friday. This is the first time that Black Friday’s daily sales online exceeded $9 billion.
In particular, the proportion of mobile sales using smartphones accounted for 48% of online sales, up from 44% in the previous year.
Analysts say that companies’ drastic discounts amid record inflation (increasing prices) have induced consumers to purchase online. According to Salesforce, the average discount rate for Black Friday in the U.S. is estimated to have exceeded 30 percent this year. It exceeded 28% last year, approaching 33% in 2019, just before the pandemic of COVID-19.
“Black Friday’s online sales surpassed $9 billion for the first time after the pandemic as consumers were fascinated by the convenience of shopping at home,” said Vivek Pandya, a senior analyst at Adobe Analytics.
However, figures also showed that high inflation has increased the burden on U.S. consumers. Adobe said the amount of post-payment for online shopping increased 78% compared to the previous week in the third week of November, which was Black Friday week. This means that U.S. consumers, who are burdened with paying for goods right now, pulled their future income in advance and used it for Black Friday.
The National Retail Federation (NRF) predicted on the 17th that 166.3 million people are planning to shop for five days from Thanksgiving (November 24) to Cyber Monday (November 28). Adobe estimates that Americans will spend a total of $34.8 billion online during the shopping period. Among them, Cyber Monday, which is called the online version of Black Friday, is expected to cost $11.2 billion (about 14.9498 trillion won).
Meanwhile, while online shopping increased, offline consumption was weaker than expected. Although it was Black Friday, which was normalized about three years after the pandemic, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that it was difficult to find a “doorbuster” in which customers poured in as soon as they opened at dawn in the past.
