US shoppers spent a record $9.12 billion online this Black Friday, a report showed on Saturday, as consumers weathered the squeeze from high inflation and grabbed steep discounts on everything from smartphones to toys.
Online spending rose 2.3 percent on Black Friday, Adobe Inc’s data and insights arm Adobe Analytics said, thanks to consumers holding out for discounts until the traditionally big shopping days, despite deals starting as early as October.
Adobe Analytics, which measures e-commerce by analyzing transactions at websites, has access to data covering purchases at 85 percent of the top 100 internet retailers in the United States.
It had forecast Black Friday sales to rise a modest 1 percent.
Adobe expects Cyber Monday to be the season’s biggest online shopping day again, driving $11.2 billion in spend.
Consumers were expected to flock to stores after the pandemic put a dampener on in-store shopping over the past two years, but Black Friday morning saw stores draw less traffic than usual with sporadic rain in some parts of the country.
Americans turned to smartphones to make their holiday purchases, with data from Adobe showing mobile shopping represented 48 percent of all Black Friday digital sales.
US retail stocks held steady on Friday as investors watched holiday spending to gauge consumer confidence at a time when inflation and rising interest rates are weighing heavily on Main Street.
Consumer discretionary stocks, measured by the S&P 500 Consumer Discretionary sector which benefits from spending on retail, restaurants and vacations, edged up less than 0.1 percent.
Stocks were muted as crowds were thin on what has historically been the busiest shopping day of the year.
“If Black Friday shopping takes a hit this year, it won’t bode well for the rest of the holiday period which is so important to retailers,” said Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda.
Consumer discretionary stocks are down nearly 32 percent year to date, more than double the 15.5 percent decline in the broad S&P 500, as consumers have been walloped by surging inflation and the swiftest increase in interest rates since the 1970s.
“These stocks are a clue as to how fast the economy is slowing and whether slowing inflation is lifting confidence on Main Street,” said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at the Leuthold Group.
Ralph Lauren Corp, VF Corp and Autozone Inc led the sector’s slim gain on Friday, each adding more than 1.7 percent compared with a less than 0.1 percent loss in the benchmark S&P 500.
Consumers “¯spent a record “¯$5.29″¯ billion online on Thanksgiving Day, according to Adobe Analytics data, up 2.9 percent from a year ago, driven by big discounts in categories such as toys and electronics.
The steepest Black Friday deals, named for the day after the Thanksgiving holiday, were for toys, peaking at 34 percent off listed price, electronics and computers.
US consumer prices rose at a slower pace than economists had expected in October, pushing the annual increase below 8 percent for the first time in eight months and helping spark a broad US stock market rally on hopes that inflation had finally peaked after hovering near 40-year highs.
Overall, the National Retail Federation, a trade group, forecasts that holiday sales, including e-commerce, will rise between 6 percent and 8 percent to between $942.6 billion and $960.4 billion during November and December. That would come in below last year’s 13.5 percent jump and the 9.3 percent gain in 2020.
Retailers began offering unusually early discounts this year.
Target Corp, Kohls Corp and Amazon.com Inc ran early Black Friday deals that discounted toys and some other goods by as much as 50 percent.
Those companies did not respond to requests for comment.
Even with steep discounts, consumers will have to spend more for popular products like a PJ Masks toy car or Mattel Inc’s Mega Hauler semi-truck because prices have risen faster than promotions, according to data provided by DataWeave.
