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Instead of “let it snow,” retailers are hoping consumers make it rain—and they may get their wish during Cyber Week.
Salesforce announced Wednesday it forecasts that Cyber Week sales will hit $311 billion globally—or 23 percent of all holiday purchases this year. The technology firm, which defines Cyber Week as the period between Nov. 26 to Dec. 2 this year, expects $75 billion worth of those sales to come from U.S. consumers.
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That optimism comes despite a slight downturn in sales in the early days of the holiday shopping season.
Salesforce saw a 1 percent decline in global e-commerce sales between Oct. 1 and Nov. 14 as compared with 2023. Caila Schwartz, director of consumer insights and strategy for Salesfroce, said she attributes most of that decline to the first few days of October; at the time, part of the East Coast was in early recovery from the effects of Hurricane Helene, soon followed by Hurricane Milton.
“There was a lot going on…[and] especially the U.S. consumer was a little distracted, so it was a soft early October. But what we are seeing in our data right now is some strong pickup as we head into the Cyber Week period,” she said.
Some categories are faring better than others when it comes to consumer interest. Salesforce’s data shows that, during the same period of overall decline, makeup sales increased by 10 percent year on year; active footwear has seen a 9 percent boost compared with 2023 and handbags and luggage have seen an 8 percent uptick compared with last year.
During the first week of November, sales have started to pick up; Schwartz said sales, discounts and global online order volumes all increased. That volume increased by 4 percent year on year is a significant metric, she noted.
“That is significant because we have not seen online order volumes increase all year. Consumption has either been flat or negative, so even though consumers might have been spending incrementally more money, they weren’t buying more goods, placing more orders. But that was not the case in November week one, so this signals to me that we’re seeing really strong demand start to percolate ahead of the Cyber Week period,” Schwartz explained.
Part of the excitement from consumers may be coming from a build-up to the seasons’ highest discount rates. In the first week of November alone, discount rates increased by 17 percent compared with 2023, coming in at an average slash of 20 percent.