The holiday shopping season of 2017 has officially kicked off. Online retail giant Amazon has opened it’s Black Friday Deal Store and already runs Black Friday hourly sales.
Adobe forecasts that online sales will be $107.4 billion, an increase of 13.8 percent, while in-store retail is expected to grow ten percent. Cyber Monday is expected to become the largest online shopping day in history, generating $6.6 billion in sales, 16.5 percent growth compared to last year. Sales on Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. are expected to increase 15 percent YoY to $2.8 billion. One out of every six dollars this holiday season will be spent between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, leading to $19.7 billion in sales. The most anticipated gifts include recommendations from Oprah’s Favorite Things List.
While large retailers (more than $100 million in annual revenue) will see higher order values and desktop conversion rates than smaller retailers (less than $10 million in annual revenue), the latter are expected to have the mobile advantage with a higher average conversion rate of 1.9 percent by attracting more shoppers with an intent to buy. Adobe Analytics data also forecasts that shoppers will gravitate towards purchasing more lower-priced items online as opposed to big ticket items. While toys and apparel saw a 39 percent and 20 percent unit growth respectively last holiday season, jewelry sales came in low, with a three percent decline in unit growth. These trends are expected to continue this season.
Most Anticipated Gift Items: The most desired electronics this holiday season include Apple Air Pods, Sony PlayStation® VR as well as home assistants, including Amazon Echo and Google Home.
Best Dates for Deals: The sharpest discounts are expected to occur on Black Friday, with televisions (23.7 percent), tablets (23.6 percent), jewelry (12 percent) and appliances (17.7 percent) showing the largest price decreases. On Thanksgiving, shoppers can expect to find the best deals on computers (16 percent), sporting goods (11 percent), apparel (15 percent) and video games/consoles (9.6 percent). On Cyber Monday discounts will be highest for toys at 19.1 percent. The Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving is predicted to offer the best deals for Christmas décor with average discounts of 22.7 percent. Furniture and bedding prices as well as pet products are expected to see the steepest price cuts on Giving Tuesday with 12.8 percent and 21.7 percent respectively. Some products will likely be out of stock before they see major discounts. Appliances, tablets and televisions are most likely to be out-of-stock on Thanksgiving Day, before seeing the largest discounts on Black Friday.
Mobile Shopping: While desktop purchases are predicted to account for two-thirds of revenue this holiday season, mobile is serving as a starting point for many consumers. For the first time, web traffic on smartphones and tablets is predicted to be higher than for desktops, at 54 percent and 46 percent respectively.
The early Black Friday 2017 sales are underway from microsoftstore, macys.com and others.
Black Friday 2017 is on November 24, 2017, but the Black Friday deal hunting begins now, check out today’s Amazon deals.
Find all of today’s early Amazon Black Friday 2017 deals online at amazon.com. Amazon will release new early Black Friday deals each day now going forward. The Amazon Black Friday 2017 sale will be again spawning the whole Thanksgiving Week, ending with the Amazon Cyber Monday 2017 sale.
