Holiday E-Commerce To Top $209 Billion, As Growth Rate Slows

U.S. consumers are expected to spend $209.7 billion online in November and December, but holiday e-commerce sales will grow at a much lower rate than they did during the first two holiday seasons of the pandemic, according to the AdobeADBE
holiday e-commerce forecast.

Adobe is predicting 2.5% growth in holiday online sales, a significantly lower growth rate than last year, when holiday e-commerce grew 8.6%, and a steep drop-off from the pandemic holiday season of 2020, when online sales surged by 32.2%.

“We’re expecting the weakest, most anemic year of holiday growth,” in online sales since 2015, the first year for which Adobe has comparable data, Taylor Schreiner, Senior Director of Adobe Digital insights, said in a briefing on the holiday forecast.

“This is a tricky year,” both for retailers and forecasters, Schreiner said, due to unknowns about the economy, and how shoppers will behave after two holiday seasons impacted by the pandemic.

“The trend during Covid, which we expect to continue this year, is that retailers and consumers are going to spread out their purchases,” Schreiner said.

“Retailers want to spread out their sales to deal with their fulfillment and supply challenges, and not bottleneck themselves,” Schreiner said. “Consumers have responded to that, and they’re also deeply price-conscious, so they are keeping an eye out for good deals” throughout the season,” he said.

Amazon’sAMZN
second Prime Day event, scheduled for this week, along with other early promotions by retailers, are expected to pull some of the holiday sales forward, into October.

The last time Amazon had a Prime Day sale in October, in 2020, overall e-commerce jumped by 43.7% in October, year-over-year, and was up 11% compared to the previous month, according to Adobe data.

Adobe still expects Cyber Monday to remain the biggest single online shopping day of the holiday season, and the entire year. It is forecasting a record $11.2 billion in spending on Cyber Monday, up 5.1% year-over-year.

Black Friday online sales are expected to grow by only 1%, to $9 billion, while Thanksgiving online sales are forecast to decline 1%, to $5.1 billion. Cyber Week, the period from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, is expected to see $34.8 billion in sales, up 2.8%.

Retailers are expected to offer deep discounts online throughout the holiday as they cope with excess inventory and price-conscious consumers. Adobe expects average discounts to be as high as 32% during Cyber Week, and continue at 20% off levels through December.

“We expect there to be record high deals at the peak this season,” Schreiner said, with a return to pre-pandemic rates of discounting.

Based on patterns from prior years, Adobe expects that the best deals on electronics will be offered online on Thanksgiving Day, and Black Friday will have the best deals on televisions. Saturday, November 26 will be the best day for deals on toys, Sunday, November 27 will be the best day to buy apparel and sporting goods, and Cyber Monday will be the best day for computers and furniture.

Last year, curbside pickup was used for 25% of all online orders in December, and Adobe expects that convenience to remain popular this year, and peak at 35% of all online orders in the last days before Christmas.

Adobe’s forecast is based on Adobe Analytics data gathered from 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, covering 100 million SKUs and 18 product categories.