Cyber Five's Share Erodes as Oct. Shopping Events Gain Hold: EMarketer

The Cyber Five shopping days -- Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday -- are still tentpole holiday season sales days, but early shopping events in October are eroding their share, said eMarketer analyst Andrew Lipsman on a holiday season trends webinar Thursday. 2022 was the third year of October deals events -- with Walmart and Target joining Amazon in kicking off the holiday season before Halloween -- and “it’s starting to become entrenched with the consumer," Lipsman said.

Black Friday traffic last year was down 6% online vs. 2019 and 21% in stores, with October sales events pulling shopping forward and “eating into demand,” Lipsman said. All five Cyber Five days last year had lower traffic rates than their 2019 counterparts, and their share of U.S. e-commerce holiday season sales has fallen from a 20% peak in 2019 to 18.4% in 2020, 16.9% last year and a projected 15.6% this year, said Lipsman.

EMarketer expects “very low-single digit” growth for the 2022 Cyber Five shopping stretch, which are “still big days” at over $5 billion in sales each, Lipsman said. Cyber Monday will again be the top e-commerce spending day of the season, gaining 3.8% to top $12 billion in sales, Lipsman said, and Black Friday will come in at $9.8 billion, gaining 3.9% vs. last year. Thanksgiving will be third in the group, gaining from store closures, growing 1.8% to $5.5 billion, eMarketer forecasts.

Lipsman showed 2021 data from the National Retail Federation saying Thanksgiving Day shopping traffic fell 27% online and 54% in stores vs. pre-COVID-19 pandemic 2019, as more retailers elected to close on the holiday. Target took the lead in making Thanksgiving Day store closures permanent this year, and Walmart and Best Buy will also close this year, he noted. “Once those three do it, everyone’s going to follow suit,” Lipsman said, saying "Thanksgiving store openings may be a thing of the past.”

Click-and-collect will be a key driver of late-season e-commerce sales, with shoppers wanting to ensure they get their gifts in time for the holidays, Lipsman said. That benefits big-box stores, he said, saying Lowe’s and Home Depot generate more than half of e-commerce sales via the store pickup option. The share of click-and-collect sales at Best Buy is 44%, 43.3% at Target and 36.9% at Walmart, he said.

In e-commerce, food and beverage sales will lead growth, at 22.9%, on inflation and grocery’s continued shift toward e-commerce, Lipsman said. Computers and CE product sales are projected to grow 8.7% year on year, falling below their e-commerce growth benchmark of 12%, along with toys and hobbies and apparel and accessories, as consumers prioritize spending on essentials.

Lipsman cited a “renewed discount-seeking consumer that we have not had in the past two years,” due to inflation. He cited Adobe data from 2021 saying the overall discount rate was 9% vs. an average 14% in 2020. “That meant better margins, more profits for retailers,” he said, but “that’s not going to be the case this year. If you want to move product, you have to provide a discount and also be price competitive with other retailers and brands that are selling the same products.” Almost all consumers are affected by inflation, he said, saying just 16% of consumers surveyed said inflation had no impact on their 2022 shopping.

On the future shopping impact of the NFL’s announcement last week that Amazon will have the first Black Friday football game (see 2210190063) in 2023, Lipsman questioned whether the game will be “the most valuable ad space of all time” vs. the Super Bowl that’s more “brand-building.” With Black Friday, “You’re catching people with that really high-profile event at the same time that they are going to be locked into that mindset of shopping,” giving advertisers an immediate ability “to convert,” he said.

As a type of event that hasn’t been done before, Lipsman said: “Does the football game compete with Black Friday shopping? Yeah, it’s gonna, to some extent. Can it also drive Black Friday shopping, or drive more shopping online on Black Friday? I think that’s probably going to happen," he said, calling the game a “new and potentially disruptive dynamic.”