Thanksgiving weekend has long been seen as the traditional start to the most important sales period for retailers, and so far, the indication is that we’re in for a strong holiday season for e-commerce. Salesforce is tracking activity in real time and has just put out its first figures for the day. It says that as of 2pm ET, online sales are up 7% globally and and 4% in the U.S. compared to 2023, respectively generating $15.6 billion and $3.1 billion in sales.
For a point of comparison, last year saw a sluggish Thanksgiving when it came to online shopping. Salesforce said the full day raked in online sales of $31.7 billion with the U.S. seeing sales of $7.5 billion. Each was up only 1%.
Salesforce said its 2024 figures are based on shopping data from 1.5 billion consumers that are captured across its customers and other data feeds in its Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Service Cloud. You can see more here.
We’ll be updating this post later with more figures, including numbers from Adobe, which also tracks online sales. Last year Adobe Analytics said that people in the U.S. on Thanksgiving spent $5.6 billion online, which it calculates at an increase of just 5.5% on the year before.
The economy indeed still remains wobbly in multiple markets, so retailers are sweetening the deal to get shoppers to part with their money. Discounts are averaging 24% globally and 27% in the U.S.
Thanksgiving Day has shaped up to be a key mobile shopping day in the U.S.. Most physical stores are closed, and many people are with friends and family, so people reach for their phones as a more subtle way to grab sale items.
Salesforce predicts that the strongest period of buying will be in the evening, after feasting, with 35% of all sales happening between 7pm and midnight. It also predicts that Thanksgiving will be the biggest mobile shopping day of the week overall, with 73% of all sales made today expected to be on mobile de …