Black Friday online sales typically increase year after year as people become more comfortable shopping from home, but not this year.
According to Adobe, combined Black Friday and Thanksgiving Day internet sales fell for the first time in 2021, from $9 billion in 2020 to $8.9 billion. Although this is not a catastrophic drop, Adobe saw it as a sign of shifting trends.
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The tech company believed the drop reflected a shift toward earlier shopping, with buyers taking advantage of internet deals as early as October.
Why cram all of your shopping into a single day when you can take advantage of discounts that are available weeks in advance?
While Adobe expected more spending on Cyber Monday (between $10.2 billion and $11.3 billion), its data indicated that the buying frenzy was not as intense this year.
As the weekend progressed, so did the products that people purchased. While Instant Pots, air fryers, and toys dominated Black Friday sales, tech such as AirPods, entry-level iPads, the Meta Quest 2, and TVs from Samsung, TCL, and Vizio led Saturday sales.
Just Dance 2022 and Spider-Man: Miles Morales, released last year, were among the best-selling games. Adobe also discovered that more people were at ease making final purchases from their phones.
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While some Black Friday shoppers browsed on their phones before purchasing at a computer (62.2 percent of all visits were from handsets), mobile purchases accounted for 44.4 percent of all online Black Friday sales, a 10.6 percent increase over 2020.
Don’t be surprised if, in the coming years, many people never use a computer to do their holiday shopping.
