In the 2024 holiday season — 1 November to 31 December — consumers spent a record $241 billion online, up 8.7% from last year. Spending peaked during Cyber Week (from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday), when consumers spent $41.1 billion online in just five days, led by $13.3 billion on Cyber Monday.

And the holidays were mobile first: $132 billion alone was spent on mobile devices, making up 54.5% of total revenue (up from 51.1% in 2023). This figure reached 56.4% during Cyber Week and topped out at 65% on Christmas Day.

Over half of online spend was driven by electronics ($55.3 billion, up 8.8% YoY), apparel ($45.6 billion, up 9.9% YoY) and furniture/home goods ($29.2 billion, up 6.8% YoY). Meanwhile, cosmetics ($7.7 billion, up 12.2% YoY), sporting goods ($7.8 billion, up 7.4% YoY) and toys ($8.2 billion, up 7.8% YoY) all experienced strong growth.

Strong discounts this season drew in consumers who have become increasingly price sensitive.

As usual, the holiday season saw huge discounts, centred around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, when we saw the deepest average daily discounts. Since customers have become more price sensitive, these discounts went further than they did last year. In the 2024 holiday season, demand for online goods increased 2.9% more than in 2023 for every 1% price-cut offered by retailers. While this may seem small, this drove an additional $2.25 billion in online spend.

In large part due to heavy discounts, consumers are generally more likely to buy high-end goods (those in the top price quartile) during the holiday season than they are during the rest of the year. This year, these high-end goods saw a 21% boost — the most expensive quartile (goods that were above the 75^th percentile price within their category) made up a 9.2% share of units moved in January through October, but an 11.2% share in November through December. Drilling down to specific categories, this boost was 54% in sporting goods, 48% in electronics, 35% in appliances, 32% in personal care products and 10% in apparel.

Consumers embraced generative AI as a shopping assistant.

Over the past few years generative AI-powered LLMs such as ChatGPT and Claude have proliferated and increasingly they are sending traffic directly to other sites. As a result, they are a new channel of interest for retailers. This season, traffic to retail sites from generative-AI increased a whopping 13x from last year. Cyber Monday saw the biggest growth in LLM usage, up 19x.

While the overall share of traffic is modest, in a survey of 5,000 U.S. consumers, Adobe found that 7 in 10 respondents who have used generative AI for shopping believe it enhances their experience. Consumers use generative AI to help find the best deals, quickly find specific items and get brand recommendations.

Additional highlights:

• Buy Now, Pay Later: This season, ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ (BNPL) usage hit an all-time high, contributing $18.2 billion in online spend, up 9.6% YoY
• Impact of influencers: Traffic driven directly by social media influencers is 9x more likely to convert customers than other traffic from social sources. In Adobe’s survey, 37% of GenZ respondents have purchased something based on an influencer’s recommendation.
• Curbside pickup: At retailers that offer curbside pickup, 17.5% of online orders made use of that option, down from 18.4% in 2023. As usual, curbside pickup peaked in the days before Christmas, reaching a high of 37.8% of online on 23 December as last-minute shoppers scrambled to make sure they got their gifts on time.

Adobe Digital Insights has been a leader in tracking the digital economy since 2013. Adobe Digital Insights offers the most comprehensive analysis of its kind based on trillions of visits and billions of transactions across the web. With the breadth and depth of our data, we are uniquely positioned to understand the economy, customer journeys and use of creative AI.

https://business.adobe.com/fragments/resources/cards/thank-you-collections/retail