American shoppers prefer Amazon to other retailers when it comes to holiday online shopping. That’s according to CNBC’s All-America Economic Survey of 1,002 adults conducted from Dec. 8 to Dec. 12.

Online holiday shopping got a boost

Online shopping was more popular than ever this year, according to the survey. 

57% of respondents said they did all or most of their holiday shopping online this year. In 2022, 51% had said the same. 2020 marked the previous all-time high in consumers opting to shop for the holidays online, at 55%. 2020 was also the first year online shopping topped 50%, according to the CNBC survey data.

The next most popular response was far lower than online. Just 18% of respondents reported doing most of their holiday shopping at big box stores, like Walmart and Best Buy. That figure has been largely on the decline since 2010 when it made up nearly half (48%) of answers. Locally owned non-chain stores (16%), department stores (8%), outlets (7%), wholesale retailers (4%), chains (3%) and luxury stores (1%) made up the remainder of responses. 

Online shopping data bears out the results of the survey. The Cyber 5 period from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday recorded $38.0 billion in U.S. online sales, according to Adobe Analytics. Adobe’s data is based on 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, 100 million SKUs and 18 product categories. Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday each broke online sales records on the respective days. Cyber Monday became the biggest online sales day to date, at $12.4 billion in U.S. sales.

Amazon is the top online holiday shopping destination

Among survey respondents who primarily shopped online, Amazon was the big winner. 74% of that group said they did most of their online shopping at Amazon. Though down from a high of 81% in 2019, it was still by far the most popular choice.

The mass merchant was also the most popular place to shop online among all survey respondents, even those who didn’t say they do most or all of their shopping online. 43% of all adults said Amazon was their top online shopping destination.

Amazon ranks No. 1 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of retailers in North America by online sales. It is also No. 3 in Digital Commerce 360’s Global Online Marketplaces Database, which ranks the 100 largest such marketplaces by 2023 third-party GMV.

The online retail giant accounted for more than a quarter (26.5%) of web traffic to the Top 1000 retailers during Cyber 5, per Digital Commerce 360 analysis of Similarweb data. Amazon had the highest U.S. traffic of any retailer site during that period, and it grew its share of traffic 7.2% over 2022. It called the 11 days between Nov. 17 and Nov. 27, which includes Cyber 5, record-breaking and said customers purchased more than 1 billion items. 

Other online destinations remain less popular

Walmart was the next most popular online retail destination in the survey behind Amazon. 16% of consumers who primarily shopped online named Walmart as their top store. 9% of all adults surveyed said Walmart was their top online shopping destination. Walmart ranks No. 2 in the Top 1000 and No. 9 in the Top 100 marketplaces. The big-box store received 6.8% of Cyber 5 traffic among the Top 1000, a slight decline from 6.9% in 2022.

Walmart said its marketplace had its two most successful sales days to date over the Cyber 5 holiday shopping period. Black Friday and Cyber Monday were the two biggest sales days, the retailer said without revealing specifics. Millions of consumers shopped on the website during those days, it says. The retailer has been investing in its online marketplace recently, and it has growing popularity among online shoppers to show for it.

Other big box retailers, including Target (No. 5 in the Top 1000) and Best Buy (No. 7), were the top shopping choice of 7% of primarily online shoppers. They were also the main online shopping destination of 4% of all respondents. Target and Best Buy recorded some of the sharpest traffic share declines over Cyber 5, down 6.8% and 10.9%, respectively.

A smaller percentage of consumers said they primarily shopped at specialty online stores like craft marketplace Etsy or local businesses’ websites. 14% of primarily online shoppers chose that option, while just 8% of total shoppers said the same. Etsy ranks No. 17 in the marketplaces database.

Department stores like Macy’s (No. 17) and Kohl’s (No. 23) made up the remainder of online shopping. 6% of online shoppers preferred to do most of their shopping at department stores online, and just 3% of total respondents said they do most of their online shopping there.

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