Thanksgiving weekend has long been considered the traditional start of the most important selling period for retailers, and so far it signals that the peak season for e-commerce is just around the corner. Salesforce is tracking activity in real time and released its first numbers today. As of 2 PM ET, online sales were up 7% globally and 4% in the U.S. compared to 2023, generating $15.6 billion and $3.1 billion in sales, respectively.
For comparison, last year we had a slow Thanksgiving Day for online shopping. Salesforce said online sales reached $31.7 billion throughout the day, with $7.5 billion in U.S. sales. Each rose only 1%.
Salesforce said the 2024 numbers are based on shopping data from 1.5 billion consumers collected from customer and other data feeds in Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Services Cloud. You can see more here.
We’ll update this post later with more numbers, including those from Adobe, which also tracks online sales. Last year, according to Adobe Analytics, Americans spent $5.6 billion online on Thanksgiving, up just 5.5% from the previous year.
The economy actually remains unstable in many markets, so retailers are sweetening deals to get shoppers to part with their money. Discount rates average 24% globally and 27% in the United States.
Thanksgiving has become a major mobile shopping day in the United States. With most physical stores closed and many people staying with friends and family, people are using their phones as a more subtle way to shop for sale items.
Salesforce predicts that the strongest buying period will be the evening after the feast, with 35% of all sales occurring between 7pm and midnight. Additionally, Thanksgiving will be the biggest mobile shopping day of the week, with 73% of all sales today expected to come from mobile devices.
The Internet has brought about a lot of proliferation when it comes to holiday shopping. Black Friday was a unique American shopping phenomenon that began the holiday shopping season the day after Thanksgiving.
Not only are we now seeing “Black Friday” sales events all over the world (Thanksgiving doesn’t exist except in syndicated American TV specials), but those dates and other holiday sales are starting to be packaged into “Cyber Weeks.” , starting a few days before you carve a turkey or eat a pumpkin.
Salesforce considered this Tuesday the start of Cyber Week, and reported a 7% and 14% increase in sales globally and in the US, respectively.
It sometimes feels like there has been a lull in innovation in e-commerce, but generative AI may have something to say about it. Salesforce said retailers’ use of digital agents and GenAI is up 32% compared to a week ago.
Salesforce clearly sees a business opportunity in building out these AI bells and whistles, so that may be why it’s revealing certain details. “32% increase” doesn’t tell you how many people actually have AI tools. Not to mention how useful it was in converting sales or whether it led to people leaving the site in frustration. I think we’ll have to wait and see if more specific statistics come out this year.
“Holiday shopping momentum is building throughout Cyber Week as online traffic and sales increase. After waiting all year for the best discounts of the season, shoppers are finally ready to make their holiday purchases and are flocking to their favorite sites via mobile devices,” Caila Schwartz, director of Consumer Insights at Salesforce, said in a statement.
