Cyber Week Continues with More Deals on TVs

“Millennials, actually, believe that Black Friday has lower prices than Cyber Monday”.

The vast majority of spending still happens in stores.

Ecommerce giant Amazon, which claims to be offering 75,000 online deals throughout this week, has already said it’s “on pace to have our best Cyber Monday in history”. “Discounts were heavy on Black Friday, resulting in strong, albeit promotionally driven sales”. Consumers spent $3.34 billion shopping online on Friday, a 21.6 percent increase from the same day past year, according to Adobe Digital Insights, which tracks online retail transactions.

The bump was fueled by shoppers turning to online deals.

Notably, tablets – once thought to be the future for commerce due to their larger screens and portability (buy anywhere!) – took a meagre 10 percent of visits and nine percent of purchases. The data captures about 40 percent of all card transactions in the USA but excludes cash.

A large chunk of the selling season lies ahead for retailers, as fewer people reported completing their shopping over Black Friday weekend, and more people hadn’t started yet.

Still, the deals began earlier this year, with people hunting for Black Friday specials as early as November 1.

Yory Wurmser, analyst at the research firm eMarketer, said the new mobile trend is fueled by consumers with bigger, more powerful smartphones, making it easier to view and purchase.

“It was strong shopping”, said Rishi Chhabra, vice president, information and analytics products, at First Data.

Shoppers who once used their savvy with coupons and phone trees for information about the best deals have traded those skills for working deals with cash-back retailer link sites, free delivery, cash reward credit cards and – still – coupons, but the online variety.

As expected, many shoppers were attracted by retailers’ sales.

$3.34 billion: Black Friday sales, up 21.6 percent from past year. November got its slowest start for online sales since Adobe began collecting data in 2012, which compared post-election US spending patterns with the aftermath of the Brexit vote.

Since Nov. 1, 2016, which ADI marks as the start of the holiday season, consumers have spent $39.97 billion online, up 7.6% from 2015. That figure for electronics and appliances grew by 34 percent to $163.76.

But the discounts also had a downside, with the average amount spent slipping 3.5 percent.