The dust is still settling on Black Friday, with Cyber Monday currently underway as this seasonal shopping holiday comes to an end. With spending on Black Friday routinely increasing year-on-year, 2021 may be the first time that the figure has dipped.

This according to Adobe Analytics, which says online shoppers spent an estimated total of $8.9 billion on the day in the United States.

It is only a slight decrease from the $9 billion spent Stateside in 2020, but it does represent the first time that spending has dipped in quite some time. We are yet to see what happens during Cyber Monday, with Adobe Analytics predicting between $10.2 billion and $11.3 billion in the US.

“For the first time ever, Black Friday saw a reversal of the growth trend of past years,” noted Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights. “Shoppers are being strategic in their gift shopping, buying much earlier in the season and being flexible about when they shop to make sure they get the best deals,” he posits.

Either way, it shows a shift in trends for ecommerce, which has surged as a result of the pandemic. Retailers with an online presence in South Africa in particular have thrived during this time and those businesses that did not have some sort of ecommerce platform were quick to roll one out.

It is likely because of the success of ecommerce in general that Black Friday saw a slight dip. Added to this is the fact that what use to be a day or weekend’s worth of deals has mutated into a full month.

In South Africa, for example, several retailers took a play out of Takealot’s Blue Dot book, with sales throughout November slowly ramping up to 26th November.

With consumers likely suffering from ecommerce fatigue, as well as a general lack of must-buy deals, along with potentially less income as a result of the pandemic, Black Friday in 2021 was not like the Black Friday of a few years ago.

[Image – Photo by 愚木混株 cdd20 on Unsplash]