Black Friday and Cyber Monday have been growing in importance to holiday ecommerce for more than a decade, despite the persistent myth that early holiday promotions would pull demand forward to take the wind out of these promotions. Retailers other than Amazon will have difficulty activating consumers outside of established tentpoles.
However, because Amazon hosted a mid-October event last year, demand was materially pulled forward. As a result, the Cyber Five period (Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday) noticeably underperformed season-average growth rates. Nevertheless, Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and Thanksgiving were still the top three ecommerce spending days for the season.
What’s in store for this year?
We expect the Cyber Five to deliver strong sales volume and solid (if unspectacular) growth rates. We forecast the period will marginally increase its share of holiday ecommerce from 18.4% to 18.5% but still down from its high of 20.0% in 2019.