About 157.2 million U.S. consumers plan to shop on Super Saturday — the last Saturday before Christmas — this year, according to an estimate from the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics.
That would be over 15 million more than last year (141.9 million) and the second most for a Super Saturday, behind 2022 (158.5 million), the NRF said. The estimate follows NRF data revealing that the second-highest number of Cyber 5 consumers went out shopping this year. The Cyber 5 is the five-day period from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday.
This year, about 197 million U.S. consumers shopped during the Cyber 5, down from 200.4 million in 2023. Still, that 197 million exceeded NRF’s initial expectations for the five-day period.
“Super Saturday is one of the last opportunities during the holiday season for consumers to get the remaining items on their shopping list,” said Katherine Cullen, NRF vice president of industry and consumer insights. “With a shortened window between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, consumers will be hitting stores and shopping online to get those final gifts and to take advantage of special promotions and deals.”
Super Saturday shopping
This year, Super Saturday falls on Dec. 21 — four days before Christmas.
NRF and Prosper Insights & Analytics data shows that 69.5 million consumers plan to shop both in-store and online on Super Saturday this year. That’s 44% of the total number of consumers planning to shop that day, and it’s up from 58.3 million last year.
About 49.4 million consumers only plan on in-store shopping, which would be less than last year’s 52.8 million. Meanwhile, 38.2 million plan to exclusively shop online on Super Saturday. That would be up from 30.8 million in 2023.
“Whether shoppers have planned out their shopping list or are waiting until the last minute, most shoppers still have purchases left to make before December 25,” said Phil Rist, Prosper Insights & Analytics’ executive vice president of strategy. “As with last year, over half of consumers expect they will complete their shopping in the week leading up to the Christmas holiday.”
Moreover, almost half (49%) of consumers plan to finish their holiday shopping online, NRF and Prosper Insights & Analytics data shows. Meanwhile, department stores (37%), discount stores, and clothing and accessory stores (25%) are the next leading destinations.
The top gifts consumers have bought so far are:
- Clothing and accessories (50%)
- Toys (32%)
- Gift cards (26%)
- Books, video games and other media (24%)
- Personal care or beauty items (24%)
Online holiday sales predictions
The NRF has forecast that spending during the holiday season — which it defines as Nov. 1 through Dec. 31 — will reach record levels in 2024, growing between 2.5% and 3.5% over 2023. That would total between $979.5 billion and $989 billion.
And from Nov. 1 through Dec. 2 (Cyber Monday), U.S. consumers had already spent $131.5 billion online, according to Adobe Analytics.
Adobe Analytics says it bases its data on more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, 100 million SKUs and 18 product categories. 200 online retailers in the Top 1000 use Adobe Analytics for their web analytics. 97 use it for site design and development. Top 1000 online retailers also use it for content delivery and management, as an ecommerce platform, a marketing platform, for personalization and more.
The Top 1000 is Digital Commerce 360’s database of North America’s largest online retailers based on their annual ecommerce sales.
Adobe projects online spending during the 2024 holiday shopping season to reach a record $241 billion. That would be an 8.4% increase over 2023.
Globally, online sales during the 2024 holiday season so far — from Nov. 1 through Dec. 14 — have reached $849 billion, according to ecommerce platform provider Salesforce. That’s a 4% year-over-year increase, based on Salesforce data.
Salesforce projects artificial intelligence (AI) and its agents to influence $200 billion in online sales this holiday season.
Salesforce says it draws on global shopping data from more than 1.5 billion shoppers from its Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud and Service Cloud platforms. In North America, 76 of the Top 2000 online retailers use Salesforce as their ecommerce platform. In 2023, those 76 online retailers combined for more than $136.077 billion in web sales.
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