Cardholders Decked the Halls With Online Shopping, Data Shows
The shift toward online shopping has continued this holiday season.
Shoppers leaned heavily on their debit and credit cards this holiday season, new data from Mastercard suggests.
Holiday sales between November 1 and December 24 increased by 3.4% compared to 2018 and online sales increased by 18.8%, according to the company’s latest report.
“E-commerce sales hit a record high this year with more people doing their holiday shopping online,” Mastercard senior advisor Steve Sadove said in a press release about the data. “Due to a later than usual Thanksgiving holiday, we saw retailers offering omnichannel sales earlier in the season, meeting consumers’ demand for the best deals across all channels and devices.”
Shifts to online shopping were especially noticeable in the apparel, jewelry and department store sectors this year. Although apparel sales grew just 1% year-over-year, online sales of apparel spiked 17%. Similarly, Mastercard reported 1.8% overall growth in jewelry sales, but online jewelry sales rose 8.8%. Department store sales dropped 1.8% overall, but online sales were 6.9% higher.
Holiday online sales were 14.6% of total retail sales between November 1 and December 24, Mastercard said.
In addition, on Black Friday, online shopping brought in 15.4% of the day’s overall spend. On Cyber Monday, 24.5% of the day’s sales were made online.
The report follows a similar shopping study released earlier this month by Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.-based CO-OP Financial Services. That analysis found that credit union members spent about 11% more during the weekend after Thanksgiving on their credit cards and nearly 17% more on their debit cards than they did during the same period last year.
Members’ credit card spending averaged $323 over the five-day period in 2019, and their debit card spending averaged $264. Almost a third of members’ credit card purchases from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday were made online.
In addition, data published on Dec. 2 from Adobe Analytics indicated that Cyber Monday 2019 generated a record $9.2 billion in sales and was the first day in history on which consumers spent more than $3 billion via their smartphones.