BLOOMINGTON, Minnesota — The holiday spending streak continues with Cyber Monday.
According to Adobe Analytics, Black Friday shoppers set an online spending record in the U.S. with $9.8 billion in sales — up 7.5% from 2022.
"As everybody knows, online shopping went up dramatically during COVID. But the numbers themselves are still pretty small. I think it'll come as a surprise to most of the viewers that before COVID started, online shopping was about 10-11% of the overall retail sales. During COVID, it... went up to about 16 or 17%. It's actually back down to about 15%. So keep that mind. Online sales of everything is still only 15% of overall retail sales," said George John, professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management.
John said retailers try to coordinate what they do online with what they do offline. Even so, Cyber Monday is still a draw.
"Everybody can still look at what happened on Black Friday and start adjusting the sales machine to make up for it. It's a little bit like airline pricing. When they don't sell enough on a day, they'll lower the prices. They sold too much, they'll raise the prices up. So it tends to go up and down," John said.
The National Retail Federation's holiday spending forecast expects holiday sales overall to increase between 3-4% over 2022. But that's not adjusted for inflation.
"It's roughly equal to inflation. So yes, that's a slowdown from prior years. But prior years were also kind of a snapback from COVID. So it's not unusual to kind of come down from a little bit of a snapback," John said.
John said shoppers can use price tracking sites to check out certain items but for the best deals on Cyber Monday?
"I know there are a lot of pundits which will say, 'Hey, it's this or that.' But honestly, if you look at the research it's totally unpredictable. So what should one do? I always tell my students and anybody who wants to listen to me, just search for the things you want and if you think the price is right and you're not overstretched, go ahead and buy it but don't look back," John said. "If you look back, I guarantee you you're going to be unhappy because you'll find that the price either dropped or you'll be very happy because the price went up. But either way, you're just causing yourself a lot of psychic grief."
John also recommends people check their interest rates on credit cards as those, on average, have gone up.
Kelsey Bitterman of Chanhassen was shopping at Mall of America on Sunday afternoon with her husband and three kids. The family came out to MOA to visit Nickelodeon Universe but ended up staying for some holiday shopping.
"I'm more of an online shopper so I was shocked when we saw a lot of the 30, 50% off which is kind of why we stuck around today," Bitterman said.
Since COVID, Bitterman said her family has opted for more experiences over things but they still were out shopping mostly for relatives. Bitterman said she might still shop on Cyber Monday. "We got a lot more today than I was anticipating so we'll see. We'll see what I have holes to fill."
Salesforce experts told Reuters they're expecting Cyber Monday to see discounts averaging 30%.
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