Cyber Monday and 'doorbuster' deals decreased store traffic for big retailers
More Americans shopped online or with mobile devices during this year’s five-day Thanksgiving shopping period than ever before, industry experts said Tuesday. But store traffic at Walmart Inc. and other retailers was down slightly over the period, attributed by analysts partly to the many early “doorbuster” deals available online and in stores.
The Monday after Thanksgiving, which has come to be called Cyber Monday, saw nearly $8 billion in online sales, up 19 percent from last year, according to Adobe Analytics. The company said that set a record for the biggest U.S. online shopping day of all time. Sales transacted via smartphone accounted for $2.2 billion of that revenue, Adobe said in a news release Tuesday.
Walmart rarely releases its sales figures for the Christmas shopping season until it reports fourth-quarter earnings, Kantar Consulting retail analyst Laura Kennedy said. The Bentonville retailer did not respond to a request for comment.
Amazon.com, Walmart’s biggest rival, also did not release its sales results for the Thanksgiving-through-Cyber Monday period, but said in a news release that Cyber Monday was the biggest shopping day in its history by number of products sold. Over the five-day period, the company said, customers ordered more than 180 million items.
In a Tuesday conference call with reporters, consumer data analysts said retailers’ investments in technology are paying off.
Consumers are shopping across multiple channels in multiple ways, said Phil Rist, executive vice president of strategy for Prosper Insights and Analytics. More than 54 percent — nearly 90 million — shopped both in stores and online, and these shoppers spend up to $93 more on average than those who shop solely online or in stores.
The National Retail Federation, which is the nation’s largest retail trade group, expects total Christmas sales this year to grow “toward the high end” of between 4.3 and 4.8 percent over last year, or close to $720 billion. Christmas spending in 2017 totaled $687.87, a 5.3 percent gain over the previous year and the biggest increase since 2010. Spending has increased an average of 3.9 percent over the last five years.
“The retail industry has to be pleased with relatively decent foot traffic in stores coupled with record digital Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales results,” said Ken Perkins with Retail Metrics LLC. He cited widespread sales promotions by retailers along with record low unemployment, personal income tax cuts and wage gains, falling gasoline prices and high consumer confidence as factors driving the robust sales.
Perkins said that given all these factors, “I might have expected the weekend to be a bit stronger.” He noted, though, that Black Friday, which traditionally marks the start of the Christmas shopping season, and in fact the entire weekend “have been increasingly diluted” by retailers’ starting their sales on Nov. 1. “This has taken away from the urgency to shop over the Black Friday period,” he said.
Kennedy agreed with this assessment, saying from what she and her colleagues observed over the five days, Black Friday “is a little bit de-emphasized from what it once was, as the be-all and end-all and the biggest traffic day” of the year.
Rather than seeing one big sales spike over Black Friday, “it’s going to be steady blips of deals throughout the season,” Kennedy said. Overall, she said, “I think we’re still looking for a pretty strong holiday.”
Online spending will continue to drive sales growth through the rest of the Christmas shopping season, she said. Mobile shopping and mobile pay will be part of that, as “mobile is just becoming a bigger part of the overall shopping experience,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy noted that Walmart added a store map for use on mobile devices this year, and Perkins mentioned the prevalence of mobile checkout options. Shortly before Thanksgiving, Walmart debuted its Check Out With Me program that lets customers skip long lines and check out with store clerks using mobile devices.
Perkins said the “tipping point” for e-commerce occurred in the 2014 Christmas season, when Black Friday store traffic dropped noticeably.
“Mobile shopping is growing by leaps and bounds and really becoming the preferred method of shopping due to its second-to-none convenience,” he said. Buying online and picking up orders in stores is up more than 100 percent year-to-date, according to Adobe, and was up sharply over this year’s Black Friday weekend, Perkins said.
He expects to see a “pronounced shopping lull” over the next couple of weeks, with more spending on weekends. With Thanksgiving falling on the earliest possible calendar date this year, creating a lengthy shopping season, Perkins said consumers “will feel like they have plenty of time to shop.”