Adobe Says Cyber Monday Sales Could Top $3 Billion

Retailers spend massive amounts of resources on marketing campaigns, store redesigns and promotional discounts to lure customers into their stores on Black Friday. However, some retailers might find the crowds a bit thinner this year.

According to a study conducted by Adobe Digital Index, Cyber Monday sales are estimated to crack the $3-billion mark as more and more customers decide to do their Black Friday shopping from the comfort of their homes or on the go with their mobile devices. Even Thanksgiving Day will be the source of nearly $1.6 billion in online sales. Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst at Adobe Digital Index, explained that despite retailers’ best efforts to get shoppers to spread out their purchases, consumers keep gravitating toward specific days.

“What’s interesting here is that, despite so much advertising to try to get people to start their shopping earlier in the season, we expect Cyber Monday to continue to be the biggest online shopping day of the year,” Gaffney told CMO. “Retailers and brands are still having trouble getting consumers to start shopping earlier.”

If Adobe’s data holds true, Thanksgiving Day sales should increase by 17 percent over 2014. While that might seem like a stunning year-to-year jump, Adobe’s investigation of 1 trillion consumer visits to more than 4,500 sites yielded another hard-to-believe data point: 76 percent of revenue retailers bring in will be spent for just 1 percent of products.

“It’s absolutely critical that retailers get the digital environment right this holiday season so that they capture the critical sales volume that drives them into profitability for the year — which looks like it will come from that 1 percent of the products in their portfolio,” Gaffney explained.

With such a focus on a narrow band of products, retailers may also need to take another look at their logistical network to ensure few (if any) out-of-stock items in order to also avoid disappointed consumers.

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