Online Households Cross 50% Threshold for First Time, Up Almost 70% in Five Years; Amazon Poised to Win —Tracking to Capture Nearly $1 in $5 Dollars Spent
CHICAGO, November 22, 2021 – Numerator, a data and tech company serving the market research space, has released new omnichannel purchase, share, and consumer sentiment data in advance of Cyber Weekend 2021. The data indicates that for the first time, more than half of US consumers will shop online between Thanksgiving Thursday and Cyber Monday, with online retail sales approaching one-third of all Cyber Weekend sales.
“Traditional performance tracking events like Black Friday have lacked both an omnichannel lens and consumer context while taking weeks to report— all of which hinder the ability of brands and retailers to react with speed and intelligence,” said Eric Belcher, CEO, Numerator. “This Cyber Weekend, Numerator will leverage our omnichannel, consumer-sourced dataset and ability to segment it by hundreds of demographic consumer attributes to provide rich insights within days of the event. This is as much an industry milestone as crossing 50% of consumers shopping online over the holiday weekend will be.”
- Turkey leads as the item expected to be most impacted by rising prices (71% of consumers), followed by Fresh Produce (62%), Meats & Seafood (58%), Baking Ingredients (42%), and Alcohol (37%).
- Nearly all respondents expected price increases on Thanksgiving categories, with only 2% of respondents not expecting an impact on the surveyed categories.
Cyber Weekend Growth:
- Online household penetration for Cyber Weekend is closing in on the 50% threshold. Last year, 47% of households shopped online during Cyber Weekend, up from 42% in 2019 and 38% in 2018.
- Amazon is poised to capture more than half of all Cyber Weekend dollars spent online. On Cyber Weekend 2020, Amazon accounted for 14.0% of all sales and 47.1% of online sales. By comparison, Walmart accounted for 10.8% of all sales, 8.1% of online sales, and Target for 4.2% of all sales, 5.2% of online sales.
- Millennials are likely to lead other generations in online shopping for Cyber Weekend 2021. More than one-third (36%) of this group’s Cyber Weekend spend was made online in 2020, the highest among all generations.
- Boomers+ will likely continue online share growth, fueled by lasting behavior shifts during the pandemic. This generation shows the largest growth in Cyber Weekend online share since 2018 (+10 points), surpassing Gen X on Cyber Weekend 2020.
A recent holiday intentions survey of 1,000+ consumers shows additional Cyber Weekend insights around regional trends, vaccination impacts, and spending intentions:
- Midwestern consumers are the most likely to shop on Black Friday (105).
- Southern and Western consumers are more likely to shop on Saturday and Sunday of Cyber Weekend than other consumers. Southern consumers are the most likely group to shop the Saturday after Thanksgiving (106), and Western consumers on the Sunday after Thanksgiving (107).
- Northeastern consumers are the most likely to shop on Cyber Monday (105). This group is also the least likely to shop all other days of Cyber Weekend: Thanksgiving Day (94), Black Friday (96), Saturday after Thanksgiving (89), and Sunday after Thanksgiving (82).
- Cyber Monday is poised to capture fewer Western consumers (92), compared to consumers in other regions.
- More unvaccinated consumers plan to shop in-store than vaccinated consumers. 27% of unvaccinated consumers say they will shop primarily or exclusively in-store over Cyber Weekend, compared to 19% of vaccinated shoppers.
- More vaccinated consumers plan to shop online than unvaccinated consumers. Half of vaccinated shoppers (50%) say they will shop primarily or exclusively online this year, compared to 39% of unvaccinated shoppers.
- Nearly half (45%) of consumers expect to complete all or most of their holiday shopping over Cyber Weekend. 9% plan to complete all of their holiday shopping during this time.
- The number of consumers who plan to spend more this year is double that of those who plan to spend less. Almost 1 in 4 consumers (24%) say they plan to spend more this Cyber Weekend than in previous years, while 12% say they will spend less.
Cyber Weekend is defined as Thanksgiving Thursday through Cyber Monday. The Numerator 2021 Q4 Holiday Survey was fielded in September 2021 to 1,019 consumers. Numerator TruView data covers the five-day period from Thanksgiving Thursday through Cyber Monday and includes all categories across Online, FMCG, Apparel, and Specialty Channels.
About Numerator
Numerator is a data and tech company bringing speed and scale to market research. Headquartered in Chicago, IL, Numerator has more than 2,600 employees worldwide. The company blends proprietary data with advanced technology to create unique insights for the market research industry that has been slow to change. The majority of Fortune 100 companies are Numerator clients.
