This Black Friday with $7.4B Sales Is the 2nd Largest Online Retail Sales Day in History

Online shoppers in the United States seem to have made a new name for themselves as the last Black Friday event produced the second-largest sales in history next to last year’s Cyber Monday. Sources indicate that while the Black Friday Sales have been the biggest so far, “small business Saturday” has also gone up by 18% as against last years’ figures reaching $3 billion while Black Friday sales reached about $7.4 billion. But let’s not forget about the last year’s Cyber Monday sales that were worth about $7.9 billion. This has been revealed by Adobe Analytics.

With an average order value in the United States at about $168 during this holiday season indicated a 6% rise from last year. Many electronic commerce pundits are beginning to wonder if this is just the beginning or if this is a blip in the normal process of activities as online retailing seems to be becoming the more preferred option for many shoppers who could just as easily ordered offline at stores. In what seems to be an emerging general change in choices, consumers are beginning to take advantage of the online shopping trend which everyone seems to want to experience while they do other stuff within their immediate environment reports show.

The numbers continue to shatter records as the total online sales figures are up by a fifth of last year’s figures (about 20%) and today’s expected cyber Monday sales are also expected to break records at a record $9.4 billion which indicates an 18.9 % increase from the same day last year. Adobe Analytics is known to track sales data for most of America’s biggest online retailers.

While many businesses have been able to weather the transition from brick and mortar to internet retailing, others are still struggling while others are barely in business as online retailing seems to be a new paradigm when it comes to consumer behavior. This new trend is already affecting the bigger electronic commerce space as Amazon’s stock prices soared while CEO Jeff Bezos became the world’s richest person once again as online sales within the United States topped more than $50 billion. 

The old brick and mortar business model is giving away to hybrids which depending on the niche will not be the same within the next decade as the rise of different advancements in communication technologies will the big technology companies to introduce other ways to make the online shopping experience more exciting as the idea of having to go out to get new stuff doesn’t have the appeal especially among generation Z that it had among the previous generations (generations X and Y). However, take it or leave it, online retailing will generate bigger numbers in the coming year than the numbers seen so far as electronic commerce takes it place.