US Holiday eCommerce Sales Will Surge 35.8 Percent to $190.47 Billion

US consumers will spend $190.47 billion this year on holiday eCommerce purchases, up 35.8% and representing an incremental $50.19 billion in sales vs. 2019, according to eMarketer. In-store holiday sales will decline by 4.7% to $822.79 billion. But online gains will make up for these losses, resulting in total holiday season sales growing by 0.9% to $1.013 trillion.

“This holiday season will see a continuation of the channel shift to eCommerce, as shoppers look to avoid crowds and minimize their number of in-person shopping trips,“ said Andrew Lipsman, eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence. “With these huge gains expected, there’s growing concern around the potential for ‘shippageddon,’ where high package volumes overwhelm logistics capacity and result in deliveries arriving after Christmas. We believe that shoppers will pull forward more of their purchases than they typically do and shift ecommerce buying to click-and-collect orders over the last 10 days of the season to prevent these scenarios.“

The Cyber Five promotional period, Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday, will continue gaining share of the total holiday ecommerce pie, rising slightly this year to capture 20.5%. eMarketer forecasts that Cyber Five ecommerce sales in the US will bring in $39.10 billion in 2020, up 39.6% from 2019. Within the Cyber Five period, there will be some record-breaking days.

It begins with Thanksgiving, which will see a dramatic increase in sales of 49.5%, reaching $6.18 billion. With most big-box retailers keeping their doors closed on Thanksgiving, shopping will move to mobile, making it the ultimate day for “couch commerce.“ Black Friday will experience its first-ever $10 billion spending day, rising 39.4% year over year. The Cyber Five period will be capped off with record-setting sales on Cyber Monday, which will rise 38.3% to $12.89 billion, once again landing as the top online spending day of the year.