Despite high inflation, online shopping on Black Friday in the United States still hit a record.
A report released on Saturday (November 26) showed that despite high inflation, American shoppers were still snapping up discounted promotional items such as smartphones and toys online on Black Friday, bringing online purchases to a record $9.12 billion on the day.
Data released by Adobe Inc and Adobe Analytics show that although the sale began in early October, consumers still waited until the big day of traditional shopping, which increased online shopping on Black Friday by 2.3%.
Odobi’s analysis, which evaluates e-commerce by monitoring website transactions, was able to capture 85 percent of purchases from the top 100 U.S. Internet retailers. It had predicted that online shopping would rise by only 1% on Black Friday.
Odoby expects Cyber Monday to be the biggest shopping day of the season again, with $11.2 billion in purchases.
Shoppers are expected to flood stores after the pandemic hit physical store sales over the past two years, but stores were less crowded than usual on Black Friday morning, with sporadic rainfall in parts of the U.S. that day.
According to Adobe data, many Americans use their smartphones to shop for holiday goods, with mobile shopping accounting for 48 percent of all Black Friday digital sales.
(This article is based on a Reuters report).