Thanksgiving weekend has long been seen as the traditional start to the most important sales period for retailers, and so far, the indication is that we’re in for a strong holiday season for e-commerce. Salesforce is tracking activity in real time and has just put out its first figures for the day. It says that as of 2pm ET, online sales are up 7% globally and and 4% in the U.S. compared to 2023, respectively generating $15.6 billion and $3.1 billion in sales.
For a point of comparison, last year saw a sluggish Thanksgiving when it came to online shopping. Salesforce said the full day raked in online sales of $31.7 billion with the U.S. seeing sales of $7.5 billion. Each was up only 1%.
Salesforce said its 2024 figures are based on shopping data from 1.5 billion consumers that are captured across its customers and other data feeds in its Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Service Cloud. You can see more here.
We’ll be updating this post later with more figures, including numbers from Adobe, which also tracks online sales. Last year Adobe Analytics said that people in the U.S. on Thanksgiving spent $5.6 billion online, which it calculates at an increase of just 5.5% on the year before.
The economy indeed still remains wobbly in multiple markets, so retailers are sweetening the deal to get shoppers to part with their money. Discounts are averaging 24% globally and 27% in the U.S.
Thanksgiving Day has shaped up to be a key mobile shopping day in the U.S.. Most physical stores are closed, and many people are with friends and family, so people reach for their phones as a more subtle way to grab sale items.
Salesforce predicts that the strongest period of buying will be in the evening, after feasting, with 35% of all sales happening between 7pm and midnight. It also predicts that Thanksgiving will be the biggest mobile shopping day of the week overall, with 73% of all sales made today expected to be on mobile devices.
The internet has led to a lot of spread when it comes to holiday shopping. Black Friday used to be a uniquely American shopping phenomenon, coming the day right after Thanksgiving and kicking off the holiday shopping season.
Now, not only can you find “Black Friday” sales events around the world (where Thanksgiving Day is nonexistent except for in syndications of American TV specials), but those and other holiday sales days have started to get packaged up as “Cyber Week”, which starts days before any turkey is carved or pumpkin is pied.
Salesforce counted Tuesday of this week as the start of Cyber Week, and it said that sales were up 7% and 14% respectively globally and in the U.S..
It sometimes feels like we may have reached an innovation lull when it comes to e-commerce, but generative AI might have something to say about that. Salesforce said that use of digital agents and GenAI by retailers is up by 32% compared to a week ago.
Salesforce obviously sees a business opportunity in building these AI bells and whistles, so that could be why they’re teasing out those particular details. “Up by 32%” does not tell us how many actually have AI tools in place — let alone how useful they have been in sales conversions, or whether they have led to people fleeing sites in frustration. We’ll have to see if more concrete statistics materialize this year.
“Holiday shopping momentum is building throughout Cyber Week with online traffic and sales on the rise. After waiting all year for the best deals of the season, shoppers are finally ready to make their holiday purchases and are flocking to their favorite sites via their mobile devices,” said Caila Schwartz, Director of Consumer Insights, Salesforce, in a statement.
