(Reuters) – After a busy holiday shopping weekend, discount seekers are expected to spend between a record $12 billion and $12.4 billion on beauty products, electronics, toys and apparel on Cyber Monday, according to Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) Analytics.
Heavy online traffic and transactions could add up to a boost in sales by U.S. shoppers of 5.4% or more, according to Adobe. Shoppers spent $10.3 billion in the weekend leading up to Cyber Monday, up 7.7% from last year as retailers offered more discounts compared to last year.
Retailers were set to dangle average price cuts of 30% on electronics, and 19% on furniture. “We are seeing very strong discounts,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, which tracks data through Adobe’s Experience Cloud service for e-commerce platforms.
Consumers are also increasingly opting for the ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ (BNPL) feature. BNPL usage is set to hit a record high on Cyber Monday, with its contribution to online spend surging nearly 19% to $782 million, Adobe predicted.
More merchandise was being discounted in the weekend leading up to Cyber Monday, according to a report from LSEG.
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), an expected winner this holiday season, began marketing Cyber Monday Deals as early as Saturday, including up to 46% off some Instant Pot kitchen appliances, 37% off certain Vitamix blenders, and 35% on Amazon devices including a 55-inch Amazon Fire TV.
Walmart (NYSE:WMT), eager to capture market share, slashed prices on Sunday night, joining the trend of retailers’ early discounts on major shopping days.
Retailers leaned on push notifications, text messages and video streaming ads more this year to reach shoppers, growing the use of digital marketing 56% compared to last year, according to data from Salesforce (NYSE:CRM).
More than half of purchases online on Monday are likely to be made on mobile devices, according to Adobe, which says it has a window into transaction data at 85% of the top 100 internet retailers. This holiday season, mobile-phone transactions may for the first time overtake purchases made from desktop computers, it said.
Last-minute shoppers on Monday could spend $4 billion between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET alone, Pandya said, “because consumers are going to be concerned about discounts weakening after that.”
Pandya said he would watch whether holiday season shoppers on Monday would continue “downshifting to cheaper goods” in categories, a pattern he noticed earlier this year.
“Because people are getting gifts for other people, they seem to stretch a little more, and splurge,” he said, and retailers’ steep discounts may make it possible for them to avoid “substituting cheaper items.”
TJ Maxx, Ross, Walmart and Costco (NASDAQ:COST) are also expected to be “holiday winners” as shoppers look for discounts, Jharonne Martis, director of consumer research, analytics and AI at LSEG said in a Monday note.
Many “retailers have really pulled back on their inventory levels, to preserve capital and increase margins,” said Rob Garf, vice president and general manager for retail at Salesforce, which tracks data flowing through its Commerce Cloud e-commerce service.
“The risk consumers take at this point for waiting too long is that a product may not be available when they go to buy it,” Garf said.
