Yesterday Adobe presented its online shopping forecast for the upcoming holiday season. The reviewed date range starts from 1st November to 31st December.
The analytics is based on 1 trillion visits to retail sites, 100 million SKUs. Additional data was collected during two surveys fielded during 23rd September and 1st October. One of them included data from 1012 US consumers, another - from 400 US retailers.
Information for global predictions is based on consumer purchases data collected in over 100 countries.
Shipping data is based on 18,7 billion orders purchased from more than 750 companies.
So, according to the forecast, Adobe expects the holiday sales in the United States to reach $207 billion - this is 10 percent more than the year before. This is significant growth. However, less than in 2020 compared to 2019 because, at this time, the pandemic stimulated online shopping. As for the whole world - the sales are expected to reach $910 billion - 11% more than the year before.
As for the sales peaks - Adobe expects them to be Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and Tahsnkiving; however, the sales in these days will grow less compared to the whole season. For example, Cyber Monday sales are expected to be $11,3 billion (4% growth), Black Friday - $9,5 billion (5% growth), and Thanksgiving - 5,4 billion (6% growth).
No surprise that increased sales cause an impact on the supply chain. For example, according to Adobe’s data, the number of “Out of Stock” messages grew by 172% compared to the pre-pandemic period. And it looks like this tendency will stay the same and even grow up for specific categories, such as apparel. Another downside of the supply chain’s impact is the price growth. Adobe expects the prices to rise up to 9%. Even the discounts this year are expected to be smaller. Some of the examples provided by Adobe can be found below:
| Goods category | 2020 | 2021 (forecast) |
| Computers | 30% | 25% |
| Electronics | 27% | 22% |
| Appliances | 20% | 16% |
| Toys | 19% | 16% |
| Televisions | 18% | 15% |
| Apparel | 20% | 15% |
| Sporting Goods | 20% | 14% |
| Tools | 11% | 8% |
| Furniture | 9% | 7% |
