AI-based shopping tools enabled an increase in U.S. online spending on Black Friday, with shoppers avoiding crowded stores and using chatbots to compare prices and obtain discounts on ongoing concerns about tariff-driven price hikes.
Adobe Analytics indicated that the U.S. shoppers spent a record $11.8 billion online, 9.1 percent higher than on the largest shopping day in 2024, which traced 1 trillion visits that shoppers made to online retail websites.
The holiday shopping season comes at a time when budgets are tight, unemployment is close to a four-year peak, U.S. consumer confidence is at a seven-month low, and price tags are making the shoppers count every dollar.
Mastercard SpendingPulse reported that the online shopping demand was also growing, with consumers being savvy throughout the holiday season, which reported an e-commerce sales growth of 10.4 percent on Black Friday, compared to an in-store sales growth of 1.7 percent in 2024.
Adobe reported that the AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail sites increased 805 percent, as compared to last year, when artificial intelligence tools, including Walmart’s Sparky or Amazon’s Rufus, had not yet been launched.
Analyst at eMarketer, Suzy Davidkhanian, said, “Consumers are using new tools to get to what they need faster. Gift giving can be stressful, and LLMs (large language models) make the discovery process feel quicker and more guided.”
LEGO sets, Pokémon cards, gaming consoles such as the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5, Apple AirPods, and kitchen appliances like KitchenAid mixers were all hot sellers on Black Friday.
According to Salesforce, AI and agents took part in online sales amounting to $14.2 billion on Black Friday, including $3 billion in the U.S. alone.
Salesforce, whose data involves non-discretionary items like groceries, has stated that U.S. consumers invested about $18 billion in online Black Friday purchases, which has increased 3 percent compared to the previous year, with luxury apparel and accessories among the most prominent categories.
Salesforce informed that the U.S. consumers increased their spending over Black Friday this year than they did last year, but the rise in prices was hampered by online sales, Salesforce told me, with fewer items being sold at the checkout than in previous years.
The discount rates were also flat as compared to 2024, and the shoppers needed to explore the most effective deals, and the price tags grew; the retailers found it hard to provide deep discounts.
Davidkhanian said that the promotions and discounts might not be as intense as in the previous year because of the increased costs of products caused by inflation and tariffs, and the final price is not as strong to persuade the shopper.
The Chief Investment Officer at Running Point, Michael Ashley Schulman, stated that the higher prices paired with flat discounts imply that consumers are no longer in the position to get as much value as they used to at the time of Black Friday deals.
However, the order volumes dropped 1 percent as average selling prices increased 7 percent. Salesforce added that the consumers also purchased the fewest items at checkout, with units per transaction slipping to 2 percent on a year-over-year basis.
Director of consumer insights at Salesforce, Caila Schwartz, added that “There are two things driving up the average selling price in the United States.”
He stated, “The first is absolutely the impact of tariffs, especially on those discretionary categories where we’ve seen a lot of growth in selling price. The other is the fact that we’re seeing a much stronger higher-income earner than average-income earner, evidenced by the strength in the luxury category.”
Adobe reported that the increase in spending preconditions an even more massive Cyber Monday, which is forecasted to make a total of 14.2 billion in sales, an increase of 6.3 years of a year-over-year basis, and the largest online shopping day of the year.
Electronics will offer the highest discounts during Cyber Monday, up to 30 percent off retail prices, and will have good deals on clothing and computers, Adobe added.
At physical stores, the bargain-chasing was relatively subdued on Black Friday, with few shoppers citing their concerns escalating amid persistent inflation, trade-driven uncertainty, and a soft labor market.
