Holiday shoppers spend $72B in October as early deals kick in
Adobe projects shoppers will spend $204.5B online during the entire holiday shopping season
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The financial strain caused by high inflation has not stopped early holiday shoppers.
In October alone, consumers collectively doled out $72.2 billion for online goods as early holiday deals kicked off, a 10.9% increase from the month prior, according to recent data from Adobe.
Even with rising costs, the spending in October was on par with the $72.4 billion consumers spent the same time a year ago.
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"With over $72 billion spent online in October, e-commerce demand has shown itself to be durable and resilient, in spite of a challenging macroeconomic environment," Adobe Digital Insights senior director Taylor Schreiner said in a statement.
Packed products at Amazon Fulfillent Center. (Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)
It's shown its resiliency through much of the year. From January through October, consumers spent a total of $727 billion, up 6.9% from the same period a year ago, which underscores how "the digital economy continues to expand," according to Adobe.
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Last month, though, major retailers started to roll out holiday deals in order to ease the burden of holiday spending, and shoppers happily took advantage.
Over the past decade, consumers have started holiday shopping even earlier to stretch their budgets. This year, nearly half of all holiday shoppers admitted that they would browse or buy products before November.
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The deals proved to entice shoppers, especially for categories such as electronics and toys, which saw discounts of up to 17% and 15%, respectively.
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So far, the most popular toys online have been Squishmallows, Roblox figurines, Pokémon card games, and LOL Surprise dolls. The top tech gadgets and gaming devices included PlayStation 5, Xbox Series 5, Nintendo Switch and Apple products.
Despite the early deals, Adobe still expects the best discounts to occur around Cyber Week.
For the entire holiday shopping season, which spans from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, Adobe already projected that total online shopping sales would notch $204.5 billion online with electronics accounting for nearly $50 billion.