Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash
By: Nick Gambino
Cyber Monday is the Black Friday of the internet. It was established as a way for retailers to cash in on the growing and now the dominant trend of customers shopping online. Now, for the first time in the history of Cyber Monday, sales are down, according to Adobe Analytics. Online spending is down 1.4% from last year with shoppers doling out $10.7 billion. While at first glance it might seem like that’s due to the pandemic and the reticence of shoppers to spend money, it’s more likely due to another growing trend started by the retailers themselves.
In recent years Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become misnomers of sorts as they aren’t really sales days so much as sales weeks and months. It’s become more of a season of sales where you don’t have to log in on one single day to snag great discounts. In fact, many of this year’s deals hit as early as October, allowing people to get a jump on holiday shopping before even Halloween had come and gone. This insight is backed up by another shopping statistic provided courtesy of Adobe Analytics. Since November 1st, customers in the U.S. have spent close to $110 billion online which is an 11.9% increase over last year at the same time. They predict that number will continue to soar, hitting $207 billion in online sales by the end of the year, a 10% jump over last year.
Now, we can’t discount the pandemic’s influence on these statistics. Cyber Monday 2020 saw a huge spike in online shopping because few consumers wanted to venture out to brick and mortar stores and face the crowds, not to mention many of those establishments were closed. As a result, shoppers stayed home and spent well-earned digital dollars. This year, with the pandemic still waging but taking a chill pill, retailers are open for business, and shoppers, especially those who are vaccinated, are heading out to do some good old-fashioned in-store purchasing, splitting the difference between the traditional shopping method and online.
All this is to say, though Cyber Monday may have dipped for the first time ever, e-commerce is alive and well.
