It’s Thanksgiving. Let the long holiday weekend shopping games commence.

Consumers are already up and at it. U.S. online retail sales totaled $63.2 billion from Nov. 1-20, a 5% increase from the same period last year. That’s driven by heavy discounting, says Adobe Analytics, part of technology company Adobe Inc., in such categories as:

• Electronics
• Toys
• Apparel
• TVs

Adobe predicts shoppers will purchase an additional $37.2 billion online from Thanksgiving Day through next Monday, widely known as Cyber Monday, a 5.4% year-over-year increase. Sales during the five-day period from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, referred to as the Cyber 5, grew 4% year over year in 2022.

Real-time Thanksgiving shopping data

In the early going on Thanksgiving morning, real-time data tracking from Signifyd reveals that daily holiday web shopping thus far is running about 6% higher than last year. Meanwhile, Cyber 5 gross merchandise volume (GMV) is running about 5% higher than the previous 12 months. The average order value is about 1% higher.

Retailers both online and offline are out early and often to acquire and retain holiday shoppers. Just in time for Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Amazon introduced deal “events” with promotions offering up to 50% on select and featured merchandise categories. New deals also will drop as often as every five minutes during select periods throughout weekend deal events, Amazon says.

Best Buy makes a holiday shopping push

Most retailers have been pushing holiday shopping deals well before the Cyber 5 shopping days. But for retailers such as Best Buy, which just posted a weak third quarter, this year’s holiday shopping season is all about driving higher and more consistent sales.

Best Buy is No. 7 in the Top 1000. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers.

“For added ease of shopping and peace of mind, we’ve extended both our store hours and our product return policy for the holiday season,” CEO Corie Barry told analysts during a third-quarter earnings call. “And this year, for the first time, we also extended that our shoppers could connect directly with one of our virtual sales experts to get help with their holiday shopping. We’re also offering free next-day delivery on thousands of items in addition to convenience store and curbside pickup options. Most orders placed on BestBuy.com or through the Best Buy app are ready for store pickup within one hour. Same-day delivery is also available on most products for a small fee.”

Best Buy Co. Inc. reported domestic online sales declined 9.3% in the third quarter of its fiscal 2024 ended Oct. 28. Furthermore, Best Buy online sales made up 30.6% of total domestic revenue. That compares with 31.0% in the year-ago period. Total domestic revenue also declined, although slightly less than online revenue. It decreased 8.2% to $9.0 billion, driven by a 7.3% decline in comparable sales, Best Buy said.

“We are preparing for a customer who is very deal focused,” Barry told analysts. “We expect shopping patterns will look even more similar to historical holiday periods than they did last year with customer shopping activity concentrated on Black Friday week, Cyber Monday, and the last two weeks of December.”

Visa holiday shopping data

In general, web merchants will find a cautious consumer who will spend about 4% more than last Thanksgiving and Cyber 5 shopping season, Visa says. But web merchants will have to it online shoppers early and often if they expect more spending.

“With holiday spending returning to its core drivers of consumer credit and real income growth, we see holiday sales rising 4.1% year over year this season,” Visa says. “While this is likely to be the slowest year for holiday sales since 2019, it would still be higher than the average growth in sales during the last expansion (2010-2019) of 3.7%.”

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