Cyber Monday is a wrap, and with it, so is the busiest shopping week of the year. The Covid-19 pandemic made for a different sort of Cyber Week, especially with fewer storefronts open on Thanksgiving compared to past seasons, prompting consumers to make more purchases online.
Still, different doesn’t necessarily mean negative. And there were plenty of winners during this year’s Cyber Week bonanza. The successes came despite a longer sales period running up to Cyber Week, and in the context of a pandemic that has resulted in staggering job losses across the country. The surprise victories also included higher in-person shopping visits than was anticipated: Retailers’ in-store foot traffic took less of a hit compared to the non-holiday period.
We looked at five retailers that notched major wins in the early days of this year’s holiday shopping season.
Amazon
Let’s start with the obvious. There’s few aspects of retail, from fashion to air fryers, that Amazon doesn’t dominate. So is it any surprise that the ecommerce behemoth came out of Cyber Week on top?
According to Numerator, a data and tech company serving the market research space, 1 out of every 5 dollars spent over the post-Thanksgiving shopping weekend went to Amazon. That marks the first time the retailer has captured such a high share of the weekend’s spend. Last year, just over 1 in 10 Black Friday weekend purchases—an 11.7% share—were made on Amazon.
It’s even more impressive that people were spending so much on Amazon this year when you consider that Prime Day, its other major sales event, occurred just six weeks earlier, rather than its usual time slot of July.
Ulta
Though Ulta, like most retailers, saw declines in foot traffic in the days after Thanksgiving, it still had a strong Cyber Week thanks to its performance in the days leading up to the holiday.
On the Tuesday prior to Thanksgiving, Ulta saw a 11.2% increase in visits, and a 4.6% increase on the Sunday before. Those numbers are perhaps representative of how Black Friday has transitioned from a one-day event to weekend-long affair to full-week bonanza, with traffic being spread out to other days of the week, like the weekend and days ahead of the holiday, allowing for lower traffic on Black Friday itself.
Home Depot
Home improvement stores have been one of the categories that have benefited from the pandemic, even in its earliest days. Home Depot, in particular, reported a comparable sales increase of 6.4% during the first quarter as well as net sales growth of 7.1% to $28.3 billion.
So it’s no surprise that Home Depot continued to fare well over Cyber Week, where it saw smaller declines than several other major retailers when it came to foot traffic. On Black Friday, it saw its daily visits decrease just 12.7% compared to 2019, according to Placer.ai, quite an accomplishment in a pandemic year. The retailer, according to a spokesperson, started its holiday deals early in the month, on Nov. 6, in hopes of spreading out demand, and also employed tactics like curbside pickup and in-store pickup lockers to give customers multiple options for collecting their orders.
Dollar General
Dollar General likely isn’t the first place you may think of when it comes to Black Friday deals—after all, it spends all year long touting its low prices. But consumers embraced Dollar General this holiday season: It was one of the only retailers to see store foot traffic up consistently in the days before and after Thanksgiving.
It had particularly strong growth on the Saturday before the holiday and on Thanksgiving itself, with a 21% and 12.1% increase, respectively. On the latter, the store may have benefited from the fact that several other retailers that typically keep their storefronts open on Thanksgiving closed them this year in light of the ongoing difficulties around the pandemic.
Best Buy
Electronics are always hot ticket items during Black Friday weekend—perhaps the mental image most synonymous with the event is that of crowds clamoring for flat-screen televisions on the big day itself. According to Adobe Analytics, that trend remained in 2020, with electronics as one of the best-selling categories this year.
Although Best Buy saw a substantial drop in foot traffic on Black Friday, according to Placer.ai, with 43.2% fewer visitors in 2020 compared to last year, it benefited from the shift to more online spend. Numerator data shows that BestBuy.com saw a 1.9% increase versus 2019, which represents more significant growth than seen by other retailers, including Target and Walmart. Despite the decline in foot traffic, Best Buy did have a win when it came to brick-and-mortar shopping: Those who did visit a Best Buy storefront also stayed there for 6.8% longer than they did in 2019.
