Online and offline US retail sales saw an annual growth of 3.4 per cent, as consumers flocked to shop merchandise on Black Friday, a day after US Thanksgiving, as per preliminary estimates by payments processor Mastercard.
E-commerce retail sales in the country surged by 14.6 per cent year-over-year, while in-store sales saw a modest increase of 0.7 per cent, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, a measure to track sales in US retail across the Mastercard payments network, supplemented by estimates for cash and check transactions.
Black Friday marked the start of the holiday shopping season, sparking fierce competition among retailers to attract shoppers hunting for discounts.
A 3.2 per cent rise, excluding automotive sales and inflation adjustments, is projected for the holiday spending season, which will span over November 1 through December 24, as per Mastercard SpendingPulse’s earlier estimates.
“Black Friday was a good indicator of how the holiday season is positively shaping up,” Michelle Meyer, chief economist at Mastercard Economics Institute was quoted as saying by news agency Reuters.
Sales for department store chains like Macy’s, Kohl’s, and big-box retailer Target may experience slower growth this season, which is shorter with only 26 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
According to data from the firm Facteus, which analyzes consumer credit and debit card swipes to track spending trends, Best Buy and Target experienced relatively flat annual sales on Friday.
American shoppers made more purchases online using mobile phones, laptops, desktops, and other devices, a trend that is expected to benefit e-commerce giants like Amazon and Walmart. Walmart, with 4,700 stores across the US, has made significant investments in store-to-home deliveries this holiday season to strengthen its e-commerce capabilities.
E-commerce retailers such as Shein, PDD’s Temu, and TikTok Shop, the shopping platform from Beijing-based ByteDance’s TikTok, also saw strong sales growth in the seven days leading up to Friday, compared to the previous year, according to Facteus.
Adobe Inc also reported that Americans made approximately $10.8 billion in online purchases on Friday, reflecting a 10.2 per cent increase compared to the previous year.
Its tally also shows that most sold online merchandise were makeup, skincare and haircare products and electronics such as bluetooth speakers, espresso machines. Adobe tracks devices that use its software to help power over 1 trillion visits to US retail websites.
In a separate report, Salesforce, a cloud-based software company that monitors various online spending categories, stated that US online sales increased by 7 per cent on Friday, reaching $17.5 billion, according to its updated tally on Saturday. Upon analysing the activity of more than 1.5 billion global shoppers, the company revealed that the consumers brought more home appliances and furniture.
Since the estimates are not adjusted for inflation, higher prices contribute to at least part of the spending growth.
