Hot holiday deals are proving to be more tempting than the turkey and pumpkin pie gracing tables across America.
Shoppers had already spent $470 million as of 10 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day, according to Adobe Analytics data pulled from more than 1 trillion retail website visits and more than 55 million SKUs.
In a pre-Thanksgiving alert issued on Nov. 27, the marketing analytics and data company found 46 percent of shoppers planning to shop online between 9 a.m. and noon on turkey day—and more than half (54 percent) planned to land those holiday deals on their smartphones. And to keep the peace with family and friends while ensuring they don’t miss out on seasonal promotions, one in five shoppers admitted their intentions of deal hunting on their phones so that their nearest and dearest “don’t notice them shopping.”
Despite retailers like Walmart and Target rolling out discounts and promotions as early as pre-Halloween, decades of tradition have trained shoppers to look to the post-turkey hours as the official kickoff to the holiday shopping season. Merchants will be moving large quantities of apparel, toys, computers and electronics on Thanksgiving, items Adobe identified as the products most shoppers plan to purchase on Nov. 28.
E-commerce has already pried $53 billion out of consumers this month through Nov. 27, which equates to a 16.1 percent boost versus 2018. And as consumers sneak Thanksgiving shopping time on their smartphones, the biggest e-tailers maintain their edge over smaller e-commerce outlets. Billion-dollar and bigger online retailers are driving phone-based revenue 10 percent higher than modestly sized merchants, Adobe says, and they’re 70 percent better at converting browsers into buyers.
“The strong online sales performance to-date suggests that holiday shopping starts much earlier than ever before,” Jason Woosley, vice president of commerce product and platform at Adobe, said.
“What will be important for retailers to track,” he added, “is whether the early discounts will drive continued retail growth overall, or if they have induced consumers to spend their holiday budgets earlier.”