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Early data on online spending this week shows consumers are being drawn to discounts. A clearer picture of Black Friday sales, including in-store spending, will emerge in the days ahead.
Nov. 29, 2024, 5:57 p.m. ET
For weeks, businesses have been sending consumers endless offers of discounts on all sorts of items. Finally, on this long weekend, it appears that consumers bit.
Preliminary data released on Friday suggests that Americans took advantage of big deals on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, opening their wallets, though they were selective about what they bought.
Consumers spent $6.1 billion in online shopping on Thanksgiving, according to Adobe Analytics, around a 9 percent increase compared to last year. That was driven by large discounts on items like toys, electronics, apparel and apparel. Vivek Pandya, lead analyst for the company, said in a note that “bigger-than-expected discounts” drove higher spending.
These numbers offer an early but incomplete look at how the holiday shopping season has gone so far. The Adobe data doesn’t include in-store buying. Mastercard will release data that includes in-store sales on Saturday, and the National Retail Federation is set to update its figures on the holiday shopping season next week.
Ahead of the holiday weekend, as retailers issued forecasts for the coming months, they painted a picture of shoppers who have grown choosy, holding off on large purchases after years of faster-than-usual price increases and with interest rates still high.
“Consumers have been waiting all of 2024 for this moment to buy the goods they want and need at a lower price, and they seem to be pleased with the discounts they’re seeing this week,” said Caila Schwartz, the director of consumer insights at Salesforce, which also tracks spending data.
