Holiday shoppers expected to shop online this season in record numbers

Online shoppers are expected to spend a record amount this holiday season, and a larger chunk of sales will be on mobile devices, a new holiday forecast predicts.

In its online shopping forecast for the 2024 holiday season from Nov. 1 through Dec. 31, Adobe forecasts U.S. online sales will hit a record $240.8 billion. That is an 8.4% increase over last year.

Shopping on mobile devices is expected to exceed purchases made on desktop or laptop devices with a new milestone of $128.1 billion in sales, a 12.8% increase. The mobile transactions will represent 53.2% of online purchases for the holiday season, Adobe said.

"It's going to be a season of mobile first," Vivek Pandya, lead analyst for Adobe Digital Insights, told USA TODAY.

Black Friday, Cyber Monday will still be big sales days

Though shoppers have already begun their holiday buying, what's sometimes called "Cyber Week," or "Cyber Five" – the five days from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday – is going to drive a lot of the online sales, Pandya said.

For Cyber Week, "we do see a good amount of the growth being a bit front-loaded because there's going to be a lot of early shopping, but we do know consumers view the best absolute discounts they can get to be during this period," he said.

In the survey of 5,000 U.S. consumers, 71% said they plan to shop online on Black Friday, and 70% say they are proactively checking for deals during Cyber Week.

Adobe forecasts online sales of $40.6 billion during those five days, up 7.0% from last year. Cyber Monday will remain the biggest online shopping day of the season and year, Adobe said, with a record $13.2 billion in sales, up 6.1%.

Black Friday is forecast to have $10.8 billion in online sales, up 9.9%, Adobe said, and Thanksgiving Day will see $6.1 billion in online sales, up 8.7%.

Together, Thanksgiving and Black Friday are expected to outpace Cyber Monday in growth, Adobe said, "as consumers embrace earlier deals promoted by U.S. retailers."

Retailers will compete for consumers with discounts

Adobe expects major discounts of up to 30% off listed prices as retailers compete for consumers' holiday dollars. This is on par with the 2023 holiday shopping season, Adobe said in a news release.

Adobe tracked 18 categories and predicts discounts to peak for electronics at 30%, and discounts for toys, TVs and apparel will reach 27%, 24% and 23% respectively.

"Online retail is one of the few sectors where consumers are actually getting a lot of value and a lot of it's a respite from the inflation they're experiencing in other sectors," Pandya said.

Other trends to watch this holiday season

Here's a few other highlights from Adobe's analysis, which looked at U.S. e-commerce transactions online, covering more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, 100 million SKUs and 18 product categories.

• Consumers will be trading up. Months of inflation have led shoppers to embrace cheaper goods, Adobe said, but the trend is expected to reverse during the holiday season. Consumers are expected to "trade up" to more expensive goods this season, with the share of costlier purchases up 19% from pre-season trends.
• Social influencers are driving consumers to shop. Paid search is the top driver of retail sales, generating 27% of online revenue for the first nine months of the year, Adobe said. But the fastest growth is expected to come from affiliates and partners, accounting for 17.2% of online purchases, with growth of 7% and 10%, including from social media influencers. Adobe's data showed that influencers are converting shoppers who have seen their content 10 times more than social media overall. In an Adobe survey, 37% of Gen Z respondents said they had purchased something based on an influencer's recommendation.

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• Buy now, pay Later is growing. Buy now, pay later (BNPL) is expected to set records this holiday season, bringing in $18.5 billion in online spending, up 11.4% from last year. Adobe expects November to be the biggest month for this payment method and Cyber Monday to be the largest day at $933 million in sales. In Adobe's survey, 39% of millennials said they planed to use BNPL, followed by 38% of Gen Z shoppers. The most common reason for using the payment method was freeing up cash (22% of respondents) and the ability to purchase something they couldn't otherwise afford (19%).
• AI traffic is growing. Adobe's survey reported 2 in 5 shoppers plan to use AI to shop for the holidays, and 20% use generative AI to find the best deals.

Betty Lin-Fisher is a consumer reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at blinfisher@USATODAY.com or follow her on X, Facebook or Instagram @blinfisher. Sign up for our free The Daily Money newsletter, which will include consumer news on Fridays,here.