This past holiday season, from Nov. 1 through Dec. 31, online retail sales rose 8.7% year over year to a record $241.4 billion not adjusted for inflation, according to the most recent figures from Adobe Analytics.
Mastercard’s SpendingPulse, which tracks spending from Nov. 1 to Dec. 24, found that online sales rose 6.7% and in-store sales rose just 2.9%.
Shopping on phones also hit a milestone, with 54.5% of online transactions occurring there, up from 51.1% in 2023, according to Adobe.
“The 2024 holiday season showed that e-commerce is being reshaped by a consumer who now prefers to transact on smaller screens and lean on generative AI-powered services to shop more efficiently,” Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, said in a statement.
The five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday alone brought in more than $41 billion in online purchases, up 8.2% year over year, with Cyber Monday being “the season’s and year’s biggest online shopping day, driving $13.3 billion in spend, up 7.3%,” per Adobe. Thanksgiving Day (up nearly 9% to $6.1 billion) and Black Friday (up more than 10% to $10.8 billion) saw the strongest growth in e-commerce, however. This reflected consumers’ ongoing price sensitivity, Adobe said.
Discounts drove sales throughout the season, however, especially on higher-priced items like electronics and appliances. The share-of-units-sold for the highest-priced goods rose 21%, with sporting goods in particular up 54%, electronics up 48%, appliances up 35%, personal care products up 32% and apparel up 10%. Adobe found that demand rose 1.03% for every 1% price cut, and this drove $2.25 billion of the season’s overall online spend.
Grocery (up 12.9% to $21.5 billion) and cosmetics (up 12.2% to $7.7 billion) had the strongest growth in online holiday spending, reflecting increased willingness to shop these categories online.
The number of AI-powered chatbot users remains modest, but consumers did display increased comfort with using them, especially for uncovering deals, finding certain items and getting recommendations. Generative AI chatbots sent 1,300% more traffic to retail sites compared to the previous year, according to Adobe’s report.
As expected, more consumers than ever financed their holiday spending using buy now, pay later options: These purchases drove $18.2 billion in online spend, nearly 10% — or $1.6 billion — more than last year. Cyber Monday alone hit a one-day BNPL record, up 5.5% and accounting for $991.2 million in holiday e-commerce.
