Report: More Than Half of U.S. Consumers to Shop Online Cyber Weekend

For the first time in history, more than half of U.S. consumers will shop online between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, with online retail sales approaching one-third of all Cyber weekend sales, according to a report from Numerator, a data and tech company serving the market research space. Last year, 47 percent of households shopped online during Cyber Weekend, according to Numerator, up from 42 percent in 2019 and 38 percent in 2018. Other findings from the report include:

• Amazon.com is poised to capture more than half of all Cyber Weekend dollars spent online. On Cyber Weekend 2020, Amazon accounted for 14 percent of all retail sales and 47.1 percent of online sales. By comparison, Walmart accounted for 10.8 percent of all retail sales, 8.1percent of online sales, and Target 4.2 percent of all retail sales, 5.2 percent of online sales.
• Millennials are likely to lead other generations in online shopping for Cyber Weekend. More than one-third (36 percent) of this group’s Cyber Weekend spend was made online in 2020, the highest among all generations.
• Nearly half (45 percent) of consumers expect to complete all or most of their holiday shopping over Cyber Weekend.
• The number of consumers who plan to spend more this year is double that of those who plan to spend less. Almost one in four consumers (24 percent) say they plan to spend more this Cyber Weekend than in previous years, while 12 percent say they will spend less.

Total Retail's Take: It's not surprising that so many consumers are planning to shop online this holiday season. After all, the pandemic brought with it an increased focus on the conveniences of online shopping, especially from new generational groups. In fact, the Numerator report found that Boomers+ showed the largest growth in Cyber Weekend online share since 2018 (+10 points), surpassing Gen X on Cyber Weekend 2020. In general, the pandemic changed shopping behaviors for all. PwC's June 2021 Global Consumer Insights Pulse survey, for example, reported that most U.S. consumers began shifting to online shopping as they were first confined by lockdowns, and will not likely go back to their old ways of shopping once the pandemic is over.