Consumers spending more money this holiday shopping season, up from past two years

Every year, the holiday shopping season is filled with the busyness of rushing around to stores and spending hours online searching for the right gifts. So far, the 2024 season is expected to have higher sales over last year, including record sales online.

Adobe Analytics has looked at the holiday shopping season to create forecasts. Adobe forecast that this year, online spending for the holidays will be a record $241 billion. That is up nearly 8.5% over 2023.

In 2024, from Nov. 1-Dec. 2, shoppers spent $131.5 billion, with nearly $70 billion of that through mobile shopping, according to Adobe Analytics. Consumers spent roughly $62 billion while purchasing items on desktop computers.

Cyber Monday saw the largest amount of spending among consumers. In 2023, shoppers spent $12.4 billion on the Monday after Thanksgiving, in 2024, that amount went up to $13.3 billion.

Sales on Black Friday were up $1 billion over 2023, hitting $10.8 billion this year.

According to Forbes, in-person shopping went down this season so far. Forbes cited a report of an in-store shopping decline of 8.2% on Black Friday this year and a decrease of 3.9% for the entire Thanksgiving weekend.

However, online sales on Black Friday were up this year, even breaking previous Black Friday online sales records. Altogether, online sales for the Thanksgiving weekend totaled $41.1 billion, which is up 8.2% from 2023.

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) is becoming more common among shoppers, as well. BNPL is a type of short-term loan that lets shoppers pay in installments without interest.

Adobe Analytics forecast that BNPL spending will peak on Cyber Monday 2024 with a new single-day-record of $993 million.

In 2022, 2023, and 2024, BNPL spending steadily increased every year. In 2022, spending was at $14.5 billion, but in 2024, that amount became $18.5 billion.

Forbes reported that last-minute shoppers tend to choose in-store than online, so retailers could see an influx of traffic in the days just before Christmas.

Of those shopping in the week (or two) before Christmas, Gen X and Baby Boomers were more likely to do last-minute shopping than Millennials or Gen Z.

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