Thanks to the burst of early discounts and long promotional deals, this year the holiday season seems to be in its digital avatar. This is especially true as online shopping surpassed store sales for the first time during the Thanksgiving weekend. More than 103 million people shopped online over the Thanksgiving weekend versus the 102 million who shopped in stores, as per the National Retail Federation.
According to the data released by Adobe, shoppers spent $4.45 billion online on Black Friday and Thanksgiving Day. Black Friday sales soared 14% year over year to $2.72 billion while Thanksgiving Day saw a higher jump of 25% in online spending. Most of the online sales came from mobiles and smartphones (read: Retail ETF Deals You Should Not Miss on Black Friday).
This trend is expected to continue on Cyber Monday –– the biggest e-commerce sales day of the year. Adobe expects online sales to rise 12% year over year to $3 billion on the day. The web analytics firm ComScore projects this Cyber Monday to be the heaviest online spending day in history for the sixth straight year, with sales likely surpassing $3 billion.
What’s Hot?
Many retailers kicked in Cyber Monday deals a bit early effectively turning the event into Cyber Sunday. Further, most of them are stretching discounts to what they call –– the Cyber Week.
The top firm tapping this opportunity is the online behemoth Amazon.com (AMZN). Like last year, the company has started offering limited-time deals from November 29 for eight days that change every 10 minutes. Amazon has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) with a solid Growth and Momentum Style Score of ‘A’ each (read: Amazon All Set for the Holiday Season: 4 ETFs to Buy).
The traditional brick-and-mortar retailer, Wal-Mart Stores (WMT – Analyst Report), launched its Cyber Monday deals at 8 p.m. on November 29 with great offers on Xbox, Air Hogs Helix drone and Beat by Dre headphones. The deals will run throughout the week until December 4. Meanwhile, Target Corp. (TGT – Analyst Report) is also promoting a full Cyber Week with 15% off on its entire website using the promocode CYBER15 starting from November 30. In addition, the company is offering more than 75 online doorbuster deals with up to 50% off on toys, electronics, clothing and home decor for Cyber Monday only.
Both Wal-Mart and Target carry a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) with Value Style Score of ‘A’ while the Growth Style Score is ‘B’ at Wal-Mart and ‘A’ at Target.
With some online Black Friday deals still available on laptops, big screen HDTVs and smartphones, Best Buy (BBY – Analyst Report) kicked off the huge Cyber Week event on November 29. The company is offering up to 50% off on “more than 50 new, one-day deals” with additional deals being revealed each day from December 1 through December 5. Best Buy also has a Zacks Rank #3 with Value Style Score of ‘A’.
Apart from these, there are several other retailers like J.C. Penney (JCP – Analyst Report), eBay (EBAY),
Kohl’s (KSS), and Staples (SPLS), which are drawing investors’ attention with sizzling deals and free shipping on most products. JCP and EBAY have a Zacks Rank #2 while KSS and SPLS have a Zacks Rank #3 (see: all the Consumer Discretionary ETFs here).
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