of the United Kingdom’s capitol city.
Updated: 4:20 PM EST, Tuesday, December 2nd, 2025
The holidays are always a time for spectacle, and it is no surprise that the retail industry is driving the most during BFCM, a holiday week that sets the tone for what the collective “we” can expect through the New Year.
Adobe and Salesforce released frequent updates to their calculations on eCommerce sales, AI usage, and even the role of mobile and social as commerce influencers. RetailNext gauged whether the ubiquity of online hit brick-and-mortar where it hurts, and Shopify visualized live commerce on the Exosphere in Las Vegas. From the practical to the bombastic, they had a universal goal: to understand whether ten months of volatility would actually drive people to completely change the way they celebrate and participate in the holidays.
We tapped into these insights in near real time, watching with bated breath to see which predictions would come true and which trends would dominate holiday retail discourse.
From Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, US merchants brought in $44.2B in total online sales, according to Adobe. Globally, online sales grew 7% YOY, reaching $336.6B. Adobe expects deals to linger through the rest of the week, especially in key categories like toys, computers, and electronics. However, Salesforce found that the real winners of BFCM worldwide were active footwear (+16% YOY), home furniture (+13% YOY), and health and beauty (+11% YOY).
These are only two of a vast ecosystem of data points reaffirming that, despite various sources counting the consumer out, they celebrated BFCM with gusto.
Let’s break down what happened, day by day.
Thanksgiving Day Retail Sales: ‘Couch Commerce’ Compounds Growth
“Couch commerce” truly came to a head on Thanksgiving Day, even among those who didn’t formally celebrate. Consumers worldwide spent $35.6B online on Thursday, up 6% over last year, according to Salesforce data, with the most popular categories being home furniture (+27% YOY), active apparel (+12% YOY), and toys and learning (+10% YOY).
US consumers accounted for $8.4B of that spend, a 3% increase from 2024. These consumers essentially used their mobile devices to browse and buy, accounting for 80% of traffic and 75% of digital orders. The most significant growth was seen in active apparel and footwear (+19% YOY), food and beverage (+10% YOY), and luxury apparel (+7% YOY).
A Global Cultural Moment
Despite its start as a US-specific holiday, Black Friday is officially a global moment. Adyen tracked transaction volume across key international markets, comparing Black Friday to a typical Friday in retail, and the results show that the US saw lower growth (2.8X) than other territories.
Across most markets, the peak time for in-store Black Friday shopping was 2 pm, except in the US, where it was 1 pm, suggesting many households waited to recover from their turkey comas before hitting the stores. Online shopping, however, saw more variety, with countries like Sweden (5 pm), France (8 pm), and Germany (9 pm) embracing Black Friday shopping as a nighttime affair.
The ASP Factor
Retail sales rose, but Thanksgiving order volumes fell 2% year over year, indicating the boost came from a higher average selling price (ASP). Salesforce calculated that ASP was up 8% over last year, with the home category, including furniture, decor, and appliances, being hit the hardest (+32% ASP increase). Meanwhile, the ASP for food and beverage categories was up 14%.
We’ve been analyzing how new tariff rules and rates are affecting consumer spending for more than 7 months. For most of that time, the headlines felt like a lot of fear mongering; during the summer, merchants saw shoppers frontload purchases ahead of new tariffs, especially electronics. However, a higher ASP, coupled with flat year-over-year discounting, means we’re starting to see the effects as retailers fight to protect margins.
Adobe’s Thanksgiving analysis differed slightly from Salesforce’s, particularly in pricing and promotions. On Thanksgiving, the saw shoppers “trade up” to higher-ticket items in categories like electronics, where “share-of-units sold” for the most expensive goods increased by 58%. The company tracked similar patterns for sporting goods (up 53%), appliances (up 44%), personal care (up 36%), and tools/home improvement (up 30%). This data diverges from the media narrative that emphasized consumers trading down to stretch their budgets.
The “trade-up” strategy could be attributed to the fact that the merchants Adobe analyzed took a different approach to discounting. The company noted that they tracked “stronger than anticipated” deals on Thanksgiving Day. For example, discounts for electronics peaked at 28% off the listed price, a rate Adobe did not expect until Cyber Monday.
Evolved Sources of Holiday Shopping Influence
Salesforce found that the total number of service conversations with AI agents has surged by 28% YOY from Nov. 25-27. Additionally, the company found that retailers who have agents on their websites saw 9% sales growth on Thanksgiving alone.
Both Adobe and Salesforce also confirmed social media’s enhanced role in the holiday shopping experience. Adobe found that social media’s share of online revenue was 5%, up 30% YOY. Affiliates and partners (including influencers) garnered nearly a 22% share of revenue, a clear continuation of influencer-led media consumption we tracked during the back-to-school shopping season. While Salesforce didn’t track influencer-driven sales specifically, it noted that 15% of global Thanksgiving traffic and 18% of US traffic came from social media referrals, up 10% YOY for both.
Black Friday Retail Sales: The Day Stays True to Its Roots
Black Friday’s origins can be traced back to the 1950s in Philadelphia, but it quickly became a Retail Shopping Holiday that marked the moment merchants officially went into the black.
The cultural customs followed: sleeping outside of stores to get 5 am doorbuster deals, trampling your peers to get your hands on the new, hot toy, and bopping from store to store with your family in tow. Despite numerous thinkpieces saying the contrary, this year’s Black Friday sales results confirm that the holiday is very much alive and well.
Deloitte’s Lupine Skelly said it best:
“People have been trying to kill off Black Friday for 20 years…Black Friday is not dead.”
Doorbusters or Bust
Indeed, even in our current era of hyper-connectivity, where we’re in a constant state of purchase consideration and efficient product comparison, we still cannot say goodbye to the Black Friday Doorbuster. Driven by our growing love for nostalgia and community-based retail experiences, this year was especially strong for in-store deals and activations.
“It seems that Gen Z and Alpha are here for the near-death experiences of Black Fridays of yesteryear, and this year, retailers were all too happy to indulge them.”
- Phillip Jackson, The Senses
The most popular offers at early-opening stores were gift bags and gift cards. Kohl’s, Lowe’s, and Target each handed out a swag bag and gift card drawing for the first 200 and 100 customers in line, respectively. For Target, the initial surge of social media hype turned into roaring outrage as consumers did live “unbaggings” of their free totes and took inventory of their free goods.
Some retailers got more creative with their giveaways, turning them into viral-ready challenges. Discounter Five Below gamified their doorbuster event (a $25 “all you can Squishmallow” sale) by daring 7 am shoppers to take the “squish” in the mallow literally—the deal had a limit of 10 per customer, and customers had to fit them all in an impossibly small tote. Each store had a limit of 15 totes.
Retailers spun up these nostalgic “embodied” store experiences to bring customers back to their stores. Did it actually get people to leave their couches (and lackluster deals) and brave the crowds? In-store traffic analytics company RetailNext found that brick-and-mortar footfall dropped 3.6% YOY on Black Friday, with retailers seeing an even greater drop (-8.6%) on Saturday, Nov. 29. Yet data from Adyen adds nuance to the conversation. The payments company found that the average basket size (ATV) for in-store Black Friday purchases was 28% higher than for online purchases. Moreover, Colliers found that traffic to more “destination centers” like the Mall of America (+10.4%) and the American Dream (+8.8%) grew the most because of their strong tenant mix and emphasis on holistic experience design.
The Digital Dichotomy
Ecommerce sales continued to climb on Black Friday, with Adobe reporting $11.8B in US online sales, a new record from 2024’s $10.8B. During peak shopping hours, 10 am to 2 pm, online shoppers were spending $12.5M each minute. Salesforce’s US numbers were relatively similar ($18B); however, its global results were even more staggering, climbing 6% YOY to $79B.
ASP continued to wreak havoc on shopping carts (+7%), impacting home goods (+24% YOY), electronics (+7% YOY), and general apparel (+6% YOY) the most in the US. As a result, order volumes (-1% YOY) and units per transaction (-2% YOY) both fell, revealing the true dichotomy of holiday shopping online: one expects not just an easy shopping experience online, but an effective one. That means finding the best product at the best possible price.
Despite research indicating that consumers were searching for deals that aligned with their strapped budgets, retailers continued to hold out on the mass discounts typically promised during this commerce holiday weekend.
Klaviyo found that although discounts peaked on Black Friday and continued through the weekend, none of the big deal days offered more than a 30% discount. In fact, brands that traded discounts for more precise personalization and relevant outreach saw more growth than their competitors.
Instead, consumers were looking for more meaningful modes of engagement—typically through AI and agents. According to Salesforce, $14.2B in global online sales and $3B in US online sales were driven by AI and agents on Black Friday. Agentic customer service conversations increased by 71% over the week prior, and the total number of tasks completed by eCommerce agents (such as updating delivery addresses) increased by 84% over the same period.
The Wellness Resurgence
The Future Commerce WOM Index has consistently found that beauty and health products have suffered from severely low WOM rates. Beauty and health are such complex yet intimate categories. Based on science and ingredient effectiveness, brand and product usage can also be influenced by individual needs, preferences, and even physical attributes, such as allergies.
Word of mouth can guide consumers to the right products for their unique needs and goals. While WOM is low, these were highly in-demand categories on Black Friday, especially among Shopify merchants selling vitamins, supplements, and skincare products.
Cyber Monday Retail Sales: A New Milestone for Holiday Commerce
Despite several days of growth, Cyber Monday remains the most significant shopping holiday of all time. Specifically, Cyber Monday 2025 was the biggest online shopping day ever, exceeding Adobe’s initial projections. Total online sales for Cyber Monday landed at $14.25B in the US, a 6.3% increase YOY, as consumers plucked up Bluetooth headphones (sales up 1,850%), video game consoles (sales up 1,800%), fridges and freezers (sales up 1,700%), and other highly considered products. Salesforce saw similar growth nationally ($13.6B, up 6% YOY), while global sales increased 7% YOY to $53B.
Adobe saw the deepest discounts for electronics, which will peak at 31% off the listed price, followed by toys (28%), apparel (25%), and computers (22%). US Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) usage crossed the $1B milestone, representing a 4.2% increase YOY. As expected, the vast majority of BNPL transactions happened on mobile devices (79.4%). In a survey of 1,000 consumers, Adobe found that shoppers were more likely to use BNPL for electronics, apparel, toys, and furniture, which ties to the key categories consumers traded up for during BFCM.
Cyber Monday was the most profitable sales day of the weekend, but Adobe noted that this is the second holiday season in a row where Black Friday growth outpaced Cyber Monday. These results confirm that BFCM’s cultural traditions remain very much intact; they are merely shifting slightly as consumers strive to make savvy decisions while enjoying the essence of the season.
AI Influence Comes to a Head
As consumers clamored for the best deals, they turned to reliable sources like AI and social media to streamline the process. Adobe found that traffic from AI platforms to US retail sales increased 670%, making up a significant share of the season’s total AI traffic (+760%). Looking at pure dollars and cents, Salesforce found that AI and agents influenced $9.3B in global online sales.
At first glance, these numbers are jaw-dropping. Yet global adoption rates call for this level of growth. Last year, AI platforms were a minor blip in the shopping journey, and now, consumers across demographics and geos are embracing ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and other tools every day.
A growth story that is worth digging deeper into is social media, which Adobe called out as a “standout” this season. Its share of revenue on Cyber Monday was 3.6%, a 56.5% increase YOY. Meanwhile, the revenue share for affiliates, partners, and influencers was 21.8%, up 7.4%.
What We’re Watching the Rest of the Season
Salesforce data found that more US consumers opened their wallets for luxury apparel this BFCM, a departure from the broader 2025 decline in the luxury sector. The luxury apparel and accessory market was upended for most of 2025 following “liberation day” reciprocal tariffs, which launched numerous direct-from-manufacturer social media “psyops”—TikTok accounts run by factories in China showing that luxury goods from popular brands that were supposedly made in Italy were being made in China. The provenance of the videos and their claims is still as uncertain as the tariffs that spawned their creation, but the fallout is real. The luxury sector is expected to contract by as much as 5% in 2025, according to Bain.
One of the findings in our New Modes consumer research was the amount of time Gen Z spent on TikTok for purchase consideration. The growth of TikTok Shop has been exponential; the platform is now on par with eBay in gross merchandise volume, a platform 30 years its senior.
The prevalence of TikTok Shop as a channel is also shaping the behavior of the retailers that participate in its programs. TikTok One, the platform where businesses manage creator relationships and their business dealings within the Shop ecosystem, has a rewards and bounty system that incentivizes users to livestream to establish authority in the marketplace.
These incentive programs are pushing creators to livestream from more locations in partnership with a growing number of businesses. The end result is seeing more streamers in public—in the mall—at your local Uniqlo. Creating activation spaces for streamers may be on many retailers' 2026 retail planners as we attempt to convert more attention into dollars.
Updated: 4:20 PM EST, Tuesday, December 2nd, 2025
The holidays are always a time for spectacle, and it is no surprise that the retail industry is driving the most during BFCM, a holiday week that sets the tone for what the collective “we” can expect through the New Year.
Adobe and Salesforce released frequent updates to their calculations on eCommerce sales, AI usage, and even the role of mobile and social as commerce influencers. RetailNext gauged whether the ubiquity of online hit brick-and-mortar where it hurts, and Shopify visualized live commerce on the Exosphere in Las Vegas. From the practical to the bombastic, they had a universal goal: to understand whether ten months of volatility would actually drive people to completely change the way they celebrate and participate in the holidays.
We tapped into these insights in near real time, watching with bated breath to see which predictions would come true and which trends would dominate holiday retail discourse.
From Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, US merchants brought in $44.2B in total online sales, according to Adobe. Globally, online sales grew 7% YOY, reaching $336.6B. Adobe expects deals to linger through the rest of the week, especially in key categories like toys, computers, and electronics. However, Salesforce found that the real winners of BFCM worldwide were active footwear (+16% YOY), home furniture (+13% YOY), and health and beauty (+11% YOY).
These are only two of a vast ecosystem of data points reaffirming that, despite various sources counting the consumer out, they celebrated BFCM with gusto.
Let’s break down what happened, day by day.
Thanksgiving Day Retail Sales: ‘Couch Commerce’ Compounds Growth
“Couch commerce” truly came to a head on Thanksgiving Day, even among those who didn’t formally celebrate. Consumers worldwide spent $35.6B online on Thursday, up 6% over last year, according to Salesforce data, with the most popular categories being home furniture (+27% YOY), active apparel (+12% YOY), and toys and learning (+10% YOY).
US consumers accounted for $8.4B of that spend, a 3% increase from 2024. These consumers essentially used their mobile devices to browse and buy, accounting for 80% of traffic and 75% of digital orders. The most significant growth was seen in active apparel and footwear (+19% YOY), food and beverage (+10% YOY), and luxury apparel (+7% YOY).
A Global Cultural Moment
Despite its start as a US-specific holiday, Black Friday is officially a global moment. Adyen tracked transaction volume across key international markets, comparing Black Friday to a typical Friday in retail, and the results show that the US saw lower growth (2.8X) than other territories.
Across most markets, the peak time for in-store Black Friday shopping was 2 pm, except in the US, where it was 1 pm, suggesting many households waited to recover from their turkey comas before hitting the stores. Online shopping, however, saw more variety, with countries like Sweden (5 pm), France (8 pm), and Germany (9 pm) embracing Black Friday shopping as a nighttime affair.
The ASP Factor
Retail sales rose, but Thanksgiving order volumes fell 2% year over year, indicating the boost came from a higher average selling price (ASP). Salesforce calculated that ASP was up 8% over last year, with the home category, including furniture, decor, and appliances, being hit the hardest (+32% ASP increase). Meanwhile, the ASP for food and beverage categories was up 14%.
We’ve been analyzing how new tariff rules and rates are affecting consumer spending for more than 7 months. For most of that time, the headlines felt like a lot of fear mongering; during the summer, merchants saw shoppers frontload purchases ahead of new tariffs, especially electronics. However, a higher ASP, coupled with flat year-over-year discounting, means we’re starting to see the effects as retailers fight to protect margins.
Adobe’s Thanksgiving analysis differed slightly from Salesforce’s, particularly in pricing and promotions. On Thanksgiving, the saw shoppers “trade up” to higher-ticket items in categories like electronics, where “share-of-units sold” for the most expensive goods increased by 58%. The company tracked similar patterns for sporting goods (up 53%), appliances (up 44%), personal care (up 36%), and tools/home improvement (up 30%). This data diverges from the media narrative that emphasized consumers trading down to stretch their budgets.
The “trade-up” strategy could be attributed to the fact that the merchants Adobe analyzed took a different approach to discounting. The company noted that they tracked “stronger than anticipated” deals on Thanksgiving Day. For example, discounts for electronics peaked at 28% off the listed price, a rate Adobe did not expect until Cyber Monday.
Evolved Sources of Holiday Shopping Influence
Salesforce found that the total number of service conversations with AI agents has surged by 28% YOY from Nov. 25-27. Additionally, the company found that retailers who have agents on their websites saw 9% sales growth on Thanksgiving alone.
Both Adobe and Salesforce also confirmed social media’s enhanced role in the holiday shopping experience. Adobe found that social media’s share of online revenue was 5%, up 30% YOY. Affiliates and partners (including influencers) garnered nearly a 22% share of revenue, a clear continuation of influencer-led media consumption we tracked during the back-to-school shopping season. While Salesforce didn’t track influencer-driven sales specifically, it noted that 15% of global Thanksgiving traffic and 18% of US traffic came from social media referrals, up 10% YOY for both.
Black Friday Retail Sales: The Day Stays True to Its Roots
Black Friday’s origins can be traced back to the 1950s in Philadelphia, but it quickly became a Retail Shopping Holiday that marked the moment merchants officially went into the black.
The cultural customs followed: sleeping outside of stores to get 5 am doorbuster deals, trampling your peers to get your hands on the new, hot toy, and bopping from store to store with your family in tow. Despite numerous thinkpieces saying the contrary, this year’s Black Friday sales results confirm that the holiday is very much alive and well.
Deloitte’s Lupine Skelly said it best:
“People have been trying to kill off Black Friday for 20 years…Black Friday is not dead.”
Doorbusters or Bust
Indeed, even in our current era of hyper-connectivity, where we’re in a constant state of purchase consideration and efficient product comparison, we still cannot say goodbye to the Black Friday Doorbuster. Driven by our growing love for nostalgia and community-based retail experiences, this year was especially strong for in-store deals and activations.
“It seems that Gen Z and Alpha are here for the near-death experiences of Black Fridays of yesteryear, and this year, retailers were all too happy to indulge them.”
- Phillip Jackson, The Senses
The most popular offers at early-opening stores were gift bags and gift cards. Kohl’s, Lowe’s, and Target each handed out a swag bag and gift card drawing for the first 200 and 100 customers in line, respectively. For Target, the initial surge of social media hype turned into roaring outrage as consumers did live “unbaggings” of their free totes and took inventory of their free goods.
Some retailers got more creative with their giveaways, turning them into viral-ready challenges. Discounter Five Below gamified their doorbuster event (a $25 “all you can Squishmallow” sale) by daring 7 am shoppers to take the “squish” in the mallow literally—the deal had a limit of 10 per customer, and customers had to fit them all in an impossibly small tote. Each store had a limit of 15 totes.
Retailers spun up these nostalgic “embodied” store experiences to bring customers back to their stores. Did it actually get people to leave their couches (and lackluster deals) and brave the crowds? In-store traffic analytics company RetailNext found that brick-and-mortar footfall dropped 3.6% YOY on Black Friday, with retailers seeing an even greater drop (-8.6%) on Saturday, Nov. 29. Yet data from Adyen adds nuance to the conversation. The payments company found that the average basket size (ATV) for in-store Black Friday purchases was 28% higher than for online purchases. Moreover, Colliers found that traffic to more “destination centers” like the Mall of America (+10.4%) and the American Dream (+8.8%) grew the most because of their strong tenant mix and emphasis on holistic experience design.
The Digital Dichotomy
Ecommerce sales continued to climb on Black Friday, with Adobe reporting $11.8B in US online sales, a new record from 2024’s $10.8B. During peak shopping hours, 10 am to 2 pm, online shoppers were spending $12.5M each minute. Salesforce’s US numbers were relatively similar ($18B); however, its global results were even more staggering, climbing 6% YOY to $79B.
ASP continued to wreak havoc on shopping carts (+7%), impacting home goods (+24% YOY), electronics (+7% YOY), and general apparel (+6% YOY) the most in the US. As a result, order volumes (-1% YOY) and units per transaction (-2% YOY) both fell, revealing the true dichotomy of holiday shopping online: one expects not just an easy shopping experience online, but an effective one. That means finding the best product at the best possible price.
Despite research indicating that consumers were searching for deals that aligned with their strapped budgets, retailers continued to hold out on the mass discounts typically promised during this commerce holiday weekend.
Klaviyo found that although discounts peaked on Black Friday and continued through the weekend, none of the big deal days offered more than a 30% discount. In fact, brands that traded discounts for more precise personalization and relevant outreach saw more growth than their competitors.
Instead, consumers were looking for more meaningful modes of engagement—typically through AI and agents. According to Salesforce, $14.2B in global online sales and $3B in US online sales were driven by AI and agents on Black Friday. Agentic customer service conversations increased by 71% over the week prior, and the total number of tasks completed by eCommerce agents (such as updating delivery addresses) increased by 84% over the same period.
The Wellness Resurgence
The Future Commerce WOM Index has consistently found that beauty and health products have suffered from severely low WOM rates. Beauty and health are such complex yet intimate categories. Based on science and ingredient effectiveness, brand and product usage can also be influenced by individual needs, preferences, and even physical attributes, such as allergies.
Word of mouth can guide consumers to the right products for their unique needs and goals. While WOM is low, these were highly in-demand categories on Black Friday, especially among Shopify merchants selling vitamins, supplements, and skincare products.
Cyber Monday Retail Sales: A New Milestone for Holiday Commerce
Despite several days of growth, Cyber Monday remains the most significant shopping holiday of all time. Specifically, Cyber Monday 2025 was the biggest online shopping day ever, exceeding Adobe’s initial projections. Total online sales for Cyber Monday landed at $14.25B in the US, a 6.3% increase YOY, as consumers plucked up Bluetooth headphones (sales up 1,850%), video game consoles (sales up 1,800%), fridges and freezers (sales up 1,700%), and other highly considered products. Salesforce saw similar growth nationally ($13.6B, up 6% YOY), while global sales increased 7% YOY to $53B.
Adobe saw the deepest discounts for electronics, which will peak at 31% off the listed price, followed by toys (28%), apparel (25%), and computers (22%). US Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) usage crossed the $1B milestone, representing a 4.2% increase YOY. As expected, the vast majority of BNPL transactions happened on mobile devices (79.4%). In a survey of 1,000 consumers, Adobe found that shoppers were more likely to use BNPL for electronics, apparel, toys, and furniture, which ties to the key categories consumers traded up for during BFCM.
Cyber Monday was the most profitable sales day of the weekend, but Adobe noted that this is the second holiday season in a row where Black Friday growth outpaced Cyber Monday. These results confirm that BFCM’s cultural traditions remain very much intact; they are merely shifting slightly as consumers strive to make savvy decisions while enjoying the essence of the season.
AI Influence Comes to a Head
As consumers clamored for the best deals, they turned to reliable sources like AI and social media to streamline the process. Adobe found that traffic from AI platforms to US retail sales increased 670%, making up a significant share of the season’s total AI traffic (+760%). Looking at pure dollars and cents, Salesforce found that AI and agents influenced $9.3B in global online sales.
At first glance, these numbers are jaw-dropping. Yet global adoption rates call for this level of growth. Last year, AI platforms were a minor blip in the shopping journey, and now, consumers across demographics and geos are embracing ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and other tools every day.
A growth story that is worth digging deeper into is social media, which Adobe called out as a “standout” this season. Its share of revenue on Cyber Monday was 3.6%, a 56.5% increase YOY. Meanwhile, the revenue share for affiliates, partners, and influencers was 21.8%, up 7.4%.
What We’re Watching the Rest of the Season
Salesforce data found that more US consumers opened their wallets for luxury apparel this BFCM, a departure from the broader 2025 decline in the luxury sector. The luxury apparel and accessory market was upended for most of 2025 following “liberation day” reciprocal tariffs, which launched numerous direct-from-manufacturer social media “psyops”—TikTok accounts run by factories in China showing that luxury goods from popular brands that were supposedly made in Italy were being made in China. The provenance of the videos and their claims is still as uncertain as the tariffs that spawned their creation, but the fallout is real. The luxury sector is expected to contract by as much as 5% in 2025, according to Bain.
One of the findings in our New Modes consumer research was the amount of time Gen Z spent on TikTok for purchase consideration. The growth of TikTok Shop has been exponential; the platform is now on par with eBay in gross merchandise volume, a platform 30 years its senior.
The prevalence of TikTok Shop as a channel is also shaping the behavior of the retailers that participate in its programs. TikTok One, the platform where businesses manage creator relationships and their business dealings within the Shop ecosystem, has a rewards and bounty system that incentivizes users to livestream to establish authority in the marketplace.
These incentive programs are pushing creators to livestream from more locations in partnership with a growing number of businesses. The end result is seeing more streamers in public—in the mall—at your local Uniqlo. Creating activation spaces for streamers may be on many retailers' 2026 retail planners as we attempt to convert more attention into dollars.
Updated: 4:20 PM EST, Tuesday, December 2nd, 2025
The holidays are always a time for spectacle, and it is no surprise that the retail industry is driving the most during BFCM, a holiday week that sets the tone for what the collective “we” can expect through the New Year.
Adobe and Salesforce released frequent updates to their calculations on eCommerce sales, AI usage, and even the role of mobile and social as commerce influencers. RetailNext gauged whether the ubiquity of online hit brick-and-mortar where it hurts, and Shopify visualized live commerce on the Exosphere in Las Vegas. From the practical to the bombastic, they had a universal goal: to understand whether ten months of volatility would actually drive people to completely change the way they celebrate and participate in the holidays.
We tapped into these insights in near real time, watching with bated breath to see which predictions would come true and which trends would dominate holiday retail discourse.
From Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, US merchants brought in $44.2B in total online sales, according to Adobe. Globally, online sales grew 7% YOY, reaching $336.6B. Adobe expects deals to linger through the rest of the week, especially in key categories like toys, computers, and electronics. However, Salesforce found that the real winners of BFCM worldwide were active footwear (+16% YOY), home furniture (+13% YOY), and health and beauty (+11% YOY).
These are only two of a vast ecosystem of data points reaffirming that, despite various sources counting the consumer out, they celebrated BFCM with gusto.
Let’s break down what happened, day by day.
Thanksgiving Day Retail Sales: ‘Couch Commerce’ Compounds Growth
“Couch commerce” truly came to a head on Thanksgiving Day, even among those who didn’t formally celebrate. Consumers worldwide spent $35.6B online on Thursday, up 6% over last year, according to Salesforce data, with the most popular categories being home furniture (+27% YOY), active apparel (+12% YOY), and toys and learning (+10% YOY).
US consumers accounted for $8.4B of that spend, a 3% increase from 2024. These consumers essentially used their mobile devices to browse and buy, accounting for 80% of traffic and 75% of digital orders. The most significant growth was seen in active apparel and footwear (+19% YOY), food and beverage (+10% YOY), and luxury apparel (+7% YOY).
A Global Cultural Moment
Despite its start as a US-specific holiday, Black Friday is officially a global moment. Adyen tracked transaction volume across key international markets, comparing Black Friday to a typical Friday in retail, and the results show that the US saw lower growth (2.8X) than other territories.
Across most markets, the peak time for in-store Black Friday shopping was 2 pm, except in the US, where it was 1 pm, suggesting many households waited to recover from their turkey comas before hitting the stores. Online shopping, however, saw more variety, with countries like Sweden (5 pm), France (8 pm), and Germany (9 pm) embracing Black Friday shopping as a nighttime affair.
The ASP Factor
Retail sales rose, but Thanksgiving order volumes fell 2% year over year, indicating the boost came from a higher average selling price (ASP). Salesforce calculated that ASP was up 8% over last year, with the home category, including furniture, decor, and appliances, being hit the hardest (+32% ASP increase). Meanwhile, the ASP for food and beverage categories was up 14%.
We’ve been analyzing how new tariff rules and rates are affecting consumer spending for more than 7 months. For most of that time, the headlines felt like a lot of fear mongering; during the summer, merchants saw shoppers frontload purchases ahead of new tariffs, especially electronics. However, a higher ASP, coupled with flat year-over-year discounting, means we’re starting to see the effects as retailers fight to protect margins.
Adobe’s Thanksgiving analysis differed slightly from Salesforce’s, particularly in pricing and promotions. On Thanksgiving, the saw shoppers “trade up” to higher-ticket items in categories like electronics, where “share-of-units sold” for the most expensive goods increased by 58%. The company tracked similar patterns for sporting goods (up 53%), appliances (up 44%), personal care (up 36%), and tools/home improvement (up 30%). This data diverges from the media narrative that emphasized consumers trading down to stretch their budgets.
The “trade-up” strategy could be attributed to the fact that the merchants Adobe analyzed took a different approach to discounting. The company noted that they tracked “stronger than anticipated” deals on Thanksgiving Day. For example, discounts for electronics peaked at 28% off the listed price, a rate Adobe did not expect until Cyber Monday.
Evolved Sources of Holiday Shopping Influence
Salesforce found that the total number of service conversations with AI agents has surged by 28% YOY from Nov. 25-27. Additionally, the company found that retailers who have agents on their websites saw 9% sales growth on Thanksgiving alone.
Both Adobe and Salesforce also confirmed social media’s enhanced role in the holiday shopping experience. Adobe found that social media’s share of online revenue was 5%, up 30% YOY. Affiliates and partners (including influencers) garnered nearly a 22% share of revenue, a clear continuation of influencer-led media consumption we tracked during the back-to-school shopping season. While Salesforce didn’t track influencer-driven sales specifically, it noted that 15% of global Thanksgiving traffic and 18% of US traffic came from social media referrals, up 10% YOY for both.
Black Friday Retail Sales: The Day Stays True to Its Roots
Black Friday’s origins can be traced back to the 1950s in Philadelphia, but it quickly became a Retail Shopping Holiday that marked the moment merchants officially went into the black.
The cultural customs followed: sleeping outside of stores to get 5 am doorbuster deals, trampling your peers to get your hands on the new, hot toy, and bopping from store to store with your family in tow. Despite numerous thinkpieces saying the contrary, this year’s Black Friday sales results confirm that the holiday is very much alive and well.
Deloitte’s Lupine Skelly said it best:
“People have been trying to kill off Black Friday for 20 years…Black Friday is not dead.”
Doorbusters or Bust
Indeed, even in our current era of hyper-connectivity, where we’re in a constant state of purchase consideration and efficient product comparison, we still cannot say goodbye to the Black Friday Doorbuster. Driven by our growing love for nostalgia and community-based retail experiences, this year was especially strong for in-store deals and activations.
“It seems that Gen Z and Alpha are here for the near-death experiences of Black Fridays of yesteryear, and this year, retailers were all too happy to indulge them.”
- Phillip Jackson, The Senses
The most popular offers at early-opening stores were gift bags and gift cards. Kohl’s, Lowe’s, and Target each handed out a swag bag and gift card drawing for the first 200 and 100 customers in line, respectively. For Target, the initial surge of social media hype turned into roaring outrage as consumers did live “unbaggings” of their free totes and took inventory of their free goods.
Some retailers got more creative with their giveaways, turning them into viral-ready challenges. Discounter Five Below gamified their doorbuster event (a $25 “all you can Squishmallow” sale) by daring 7 am shoppers to take the “squish” in the mallow literally—the deal had a limit of 10 per customer, and customers had to fit them all in an impossibly small tote. Each store had a limit of 15 totes.
Retailers spun up these nostalgic “embodied” store experiences to bring customers back to their stores. Did it actually get people to leave their couches (and lackluster deals) and brave the crowds? In-store traffic analytics company RetailNext found that brick-and-mortar footfall dropped 3.6% YOY on Black Friday, with retailers seeing an even greater drop (-8.6%) on Saturday, Nov. 29. Yet data from Adyen adds nuance to the conversation. The payments company found that the average basket size (ATV) for in-store Black Friday purchases was 28% higher than for online purchases. Moreover, Colliers found that traffic to more “destination centers” like the Mall of America (+10.4%) and the American Dream (+8.8%) grew the most because of their strong tenant mix and emphasis on holistic experience design.
The Digital Dichotomy
Ecommerce sales continued to climb on Black Friday, with Adobe reporting $11.8B in US online sales, a new record from 2024’s $10.8B. During peak shopping hours, 10 am to 2 pm, online shoppers were spending $12.5M each minute. Salesforce’s US numbers were relatively similar ($18B); however, its global results were even more staggering, climbing 6% YOY to $79B.
ASP continued to wreak havoc on shopping carts (+7%), impacting home goods (+24% YOY), electronics (+7% YOY), and general apparel (+6% YOY) the most in the US. As a result, order volumes (-1% YOY) and units per transaction (-2% YOY) both fell, revealing the true dichotomy of holiday shopping online: one expects not just an easy shopping experience online, but an effective one. That means finding the best product at the best possible price.
Despite research indicating that consumers were searching for deals that aligned with their strapped budgets, retailers continued to hold out on the mass discounts typically promised during this commerce holiday weekend.
Klaviyo found that although discounts peaked on Black Friday and continued through the weekend, none of the big deal days offered more than a 30% discount. In fact, brands that traded discounts for more precise personalization and relevant outreach saw more growth than their competitors.
Instead, consumers were looking for more meaningful modes of engagement—typically through AI and agents. According to Salesforce, $14.2B in global online sales and $3B in US online sales were driven by AI and agents on Black Friday. Agentic customer service conversations increased by 71% over the week prior, and the total number of tasks completed by eCommerce agents (such as updating delivery addresses) increased by 84% over the same period.
The Wellness Resurgence
The Future Commerce WOM Index has consistently found that beauty and health products have suffered from severely low WOM rates. Beauty and health are such complex yet intimate categories. Based on science and ingredient effectiveness, brand and product usage can also be influenced by individual needs, preferences, and even physical attributes, such as allergies.
Word of mouth can guide consumers to the right products for their unique needs and goals. While WOM is low, these were highly in-demand categories on Black Friday, especially among Shopify merchants selling vitamins, supplements, and skincare products.
Cyber Monday Retail Sales: A New Milestone for Holiday Commerce
Despite several days of growth, Cyber Monday remains the most significant shopping holiday of all time. Specifically, Cyber Monday 2025 was the biggest online shopping day ever, exceeding Adobe’s initial projections. Total online sales for Cyber Monday landed at $14.25B in the US, a 6.3% increase YOY, as consumers plucked up Bluetooth headphones (sales up 1,850%), video game consoles (sales up 1,800%), fridges and freezers (sales up 1,700%), and other highly considered products. Salesforce saw similar growth nationally ($13.6B, up 6% YOY), while global sales increased 7% YOY to $53B.
Adobe saw the deepest discounts for electronics, which will peak at 31% off the listed price, followed by toys (28%), apparel (25%), and computers (22%). US Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) usage crossed the $1B milestone, representing a 4.2% increase YOY. As expected, the vast majority of BNPL transactions happened on mobile devices (79.4%). In a survey of 1,000 consumers, Adobe found that shoppers were more likely to use BNPL for electronics, apparel, toys, and furniture, which ties to the key categories consumers traded up for during BFCM.
Cyber Monday was the most profitable sales day of the weekend, but Adobe noted that this is the second holiday season in a row where Black Friday growth outpaced Cyber Monday. These results confirm that BFCM’s cultural traditions remain very much intact; they are merely shifting slightly as consumers strive to make savvy decisions while enjoying the essence of the season.
AI Influence Comes to a Head
As consumers clamored for the best deals, they turned to reliable sources like AI and social media to streamline the process. Adobe found that traffic from AI platforms to US retail sales increased 670%, making up a significant share of the season’s total AI traffic (+760%). Looking at pure dollars and cents, Salesforce found that AI and agents influenced $9.3B in global online sales.
At first glance, these numbers are jaw-dropping. Yet global adoption rates call for this level of growth. Last year, AI platforms were a minor blip in the shopping journey, and now, consumers across demographics and geos are embracing ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and other tools every day.
A growth story that is worth digging deeper into is social media, which Adobe called out as a “standout” this season. Its share of revenue on Cyber Monday was 3.6%, a 56.5% increase YOY. Meanwhile, the revenue share for affiliates, partners, and influencers was 21.8%, up 7.4%.
What We’re Watching the Rest of the Season
Salesforce data found that more US consumers opened their wallets for luxury apparel this BFCM, a departure from the broader 2025 decline in the luxury sector. The luxury apparel and accessory market was upended for most of 2025 following “liberation day” reciprocal tariffs, which launched numerous direct-from-manufacturer social media “psyops”—TikTok accounts run by factories in China showing that luxury goods from popular brands that were supposedly made in Italy were being made in China. The provenance of the videos and their claims is still as uncertain as the tariffs that spawned their creation, but the fallout is real. The luxury sector is expected to contract by as much as 5% in 2025, according to Bain.
One of the findings in our New Modes consumer research was the amount of time Gen Z spent on TikTok for purchase consideration. The growth of TikTok Shop has been exponential; the platform is now on par with eBay in gross merchandise volume, a platform 30 years its senior.
The prevalence of TikTok Shop as a channel is also shaping the behavior of the retailers that participate in its programs. TikTok One, the platform where businesses manage creator relationships and their business dealings within the Shop ecosystem, has a rewards and bounty system that incentivizes users to livestream to establish authority in the marketplace.
These incentive programs are pushing creators to livestream from more locations in partnership with a growing number of businesses. The end result is seeing more streamers in public—in the mall—at your local Uniqlo. Creating activation spaces for streamers may be on many retailers' 2026 retail planners as we attempt to convert more attention into dollars.
Updated: 4:20 PM EST, Tuesday, December 2nd, 2025
The holidays are always a time for spectacle, and it is no surprise that the retail industry is driving the most during BFCM, a holiday week that sets the tone for what the collective “we” can expect through the New Year.
Adobe and Salesforce released frequent updates to their calculations on eCommerce sales, AI usage, and even the role of mobile and social as commerce influencers. RetailNext gauged whether the ubiquity of online hit brick-and-mortar where it hurts, and Shopify visualized live commerce on the Exosphere in Las Vegas. From the practical to the bombastic, they had a universal goal: to understand whether ten months of volatility would actually drive people to completely change the way they celebrate and participate in the holidays.
We tapped into these insights in near real time, watching with bated breath to see which predictions would come true and which trends would dominate holiday retail discourse.
From Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, US merchants brought in $44.2B in total online sales, according to Adobe. Globally, online sales grew 7% YOY, reaching $336.6B. Adobe expects deals to linger through the rest of the week, especially in key categories like toys, computers, and electronics. However, Salesforce found that the real winners of BFCM worldwide were active footwear (+16% YOY), home furniture (+13% YOY), and health and beauty (+11% YOY).
These are only two of a vast ecosystem of data points reaffirming that, despite various sources counting the consumer out, they celebrated BFCM with gusto.
Let’s break down what happened, day by day.
Thanksgiving Day Retail Sales: ‘Couch Commerce’ Compounds Growth
“Couch commerce” truly came to a head on Thanksgiving Day, even among those who didn’t formally celebrate. Consumers worldwide spent $35.6B online on Thursday, up 6% over last year, according to Salesforce data, with the most popular categories being home furniture (+27% YOY), active apparel (+12% YOY), and toys and learning (+10% YOY).
US consumers accounted for $8.4B of that spend, a 3% increase from 2024. These consumers essentially used their mobile devices to browse and buy, accounting for 80% of traffic and 75% of digital orders. The most significant growth was seen in active apparel and footwear (+19% YOY), food and beverage (+10% YOY), and luxury apparel (+7% YOY).
A Global Cultural Moment
Despite its start as a US-specific holiday, Black Friday is officially a global moment. Adyen tracked transaction volume across key international markets, comparing Black Friday to a typical Friday in retail, and the results show that the US saw lower growth (2.8X) than other territories.
Across most markets, the peak time for in-store Black Friday shopping was 2 pm, except in the US, where it was 1 pm, suggesting many households waited to recover from their turkey comas before hitting the stores. Online shopping, however, saw more variety, with countries like Sweden (5 pm), France (8 pm), and Germany (9 pm) embracing Black Friday shopping as a nighttime affair.
The ASP Factor
Retail sales rose, but Thanksgiving order volumes fell 2% year over year, indicating the boost came from a higher average selling price (ASP). Salesforce calculated that ASP was up 8% over last year, with the home category, including furniture, decor, and appliances, being hit the hardest (+32% ASP increase). Meanwhile, the ASP for food and beverage categories was up 14%.
We’ve been analyzing how new tariff rules and rates are affecting consumer spending for more than 7 months. For most of that time, the headlines felt like a lot of fear mongering; during the summer, merchants saw shoppers frontload purchases ahead of new tariffs, especially electronics. However, a higher ASP, coupled with flat year-over-year discounting, means we’re starting to see the effects as retailers fight to protect margins.
Adobe’s Thanksgiving analysis differed slightly from Salesforce’s, particularly in pricing and promotions. On Thanksgiving, the saw shoppers “trade up” to higher-ticket items in categories like electronics, where “share-of-units sold” for the most expensive goods increased by 58%. The company tracked similar patterns for sporting goods (up 53%), appliances (up 44%), personal care (up 36%), and tools/home improvement (up 30%). This data diverges from the media narrative that emphasized consumers trading down to stretch their budgets.
The “trade-up” strategy could be attributed to the fact that the merchants Adobe analyzed took a different approach to discounting. The company noted that they tracked “stronger than anticipated” deals on Thanksgiving Day. For example, discounts for electronics peaked at 28% off the listed price, a rate Adobe did not expect until Cyber Monday.
Evolved Sources of Holiday Shopping Influence
Salesforce found that the total number of service conversations with AI agents has surged by 28% YOY from Nov. 25-27. Additionally, the company found that retailers who have agents on their websites saw 9% sales growth on Thanksgiving alone.
Both Adobe and Salesforce also confirmed social media’s enhanced role in the holiday shopping experience. Adobe found that social media’s share of online revenue was 5%, up 30% YOY. Affiliates and partners (including influencers) garnered nearly a 22% share of revenue, a clear continuation of influencer-led media consumption we tracked during the back-to-school shopping season. While Salesforce didn’t track influencer-driven sales specifically, it noted that 15% of global Thanksgiving traffic and 18% of US traffic came from social media referrals, up 10% YOY for both.
Black Friday Retail Sales: The Day Stays True to Its Roots
Black Friday’s origins can be traced back to the 1950s in Philadelphia, but it quickly became a Retail Shopping Holiday that marked the moment merchants officially went into the black.
The cultural customs followed: sleeping outside of stores to get 5 am doorbuster deals, trampling your peers to get your hands on the new, hot toy, and bopping from store to store with your family in tow. Despite numerous thinkpieces saying the contrary, this year’s Black Friday sales results confirm that the holiday is very much alive and well.
Deloitte’s Lupine Skelly said it best:
“People have been trying to kill off Black Friday for 20 years…Black Friday is not dead.”
Doorbusters or Bust
Indeed, even in our current era of hyper-connectivity, where we’re in a constant state of purchase consideration and efficient product comparison, we still cannot say goodbye to the Black Friday Doorbuster. Driven by our growing love for nostalgia and community-based retail experiences, this year was especially strong for in-store deals and activations.
“It seems that Gen Z and Alpha are here for the near-death experiences of Black Fridays of yesteryear, and this year, retailers were all too happy to indulge them.”
- Phillip Jackson, The Senses
The most popular offers at early-opening stores were gift bags and gift cards. Kohl’s, Lowe’s, and Target each handed out a swag bag and gift card drawing for the first 200 and 100 customers in line, respectively. For Target, the initial surge of social media hype turned into roaring outrage as consumers did live “unbaggings” of their free totes and took inventory of their free goods.
Some retailers got more creative with their giveaways, turning them into viral-ready challenges. Discounter Five Below gamified their doorbuster event (a $25 “all you can Squishmallow” sale) by daring 7 am shoppers to take the “squish” in the mallow literally—the deal had a limit of 10 per customer, and customers had to fit them all in an impossibly small tote. Each store had a limit of 15 totes.
Retailers spun up these nostalgic “embodied” store experiences to bring customers back to their stores. Did it actually get people to leave their couches (and lackluster deals) and brave the crowds? In-store traffic analytics company RetailNext found that brick-and-mortar footfall dropped 3.6% YOY on Black Friday, with retailers seeing an even greater drop (-8.6%) on Saturday, Nov. 29. Yet data from Adyen adds nuance to the conversation. The payments company found that the average basket size (ATV) for in-store Black Friday purchases was 28% higher than for online purchases. Moreover, Colliers found that traffic to more “destination centers” like the Mall of America (+10.4%) and the American Dream (+8.8%) grew the most because of their strong tenant mix and emphasis on holistic experience design.
The Digital Dichotomy
Ecommerce sales continued to climb on Black Friday, with Adobe reporting $11.8B in US online sales, a new record from 2024’s $10.8B. During peak shopping hours, 10 am to 2 pm, online shoppers were spending $12.5M each minute. Salesforce’s US numbers were relatively similar ($18B); however, its global results were even more staggering, climbing 6% YOY to $79B.
ASP continued to wreak havoc on shopping carts (+7%), impacting home goods (+24% YOY), electronics (+7% YOY), and general apparel (+6% YOY) the most in the US. As a result, order volumes (-1% YOY) and units per transaction (-2% YOY) both fell, revealing the true dichotomy of holiday shopping online: one expects not just an easy shopping experience online, but an effective one. That means finding the best product at the best possible price.
Despite research indicating that consumers were searching for deals that aligned with their strapped budgets, retailers continued to hold out on the mass discounts typically promised during this commerce holiday weekend.
Klaviyo found that although discounts peaked on Black Friday and continued through the weekend, none of the big deal days offered more than a 30% discount. In fact, brands that traded discounts for more precise personalization and relevant outreach saw more growth than their competitors.
Instead, consumers were looking for more meaningful modes of engagement—typically through AI and agents. According to Salesforce, $14.2B in global online sales and $3B in US online sales were driven by AI and agents on Black Friday. Agentic customer service conversations increased by 71% over the week prior, and the total number of tasks completed by eCommerce agents (such as updating delivery addresses) increased by 84% over the same period.
The Wellness Resurgence
The Future Commerce WOM Index has consistently found that beauty and health products have suffered from severely low WOM rates. Beauty and health are such complex yet intimate categories. Based on science and ingredient effectiveness, brand and product usage can also be influenced by individual needs, preferences, and even physical attributes, such as allergies.
Word of mouth can guide consumers to the right products for their unique needs and goals. While WOM is low, these were highly in-demand categories on Black Friday, especially among Shopify merchants selling vitamins, supplements, and skincare products.
Cyber Monday Retail Sales: A New Milestone for Holiday Commerce
Despite several days of growth, Cyber Monday remains the most significant shopping holiday of all time. Specifically, Cyber Monday 2025 was the biggest online shopping day ever, exceeding Adobe’s initial projections. Total online sales for Cyber Monday landed at $14.25B in the US, a 6.3% increase YOY, as consumers plucked up Bluetooth headphones (sales up 1,850%), video game consoles (sales up 1,800%), fridges and freezers (sales up 1,700%), and other highly considered products. Salesforce saw similar growth nationally ($13.6B, up 6% YOY), while global sales increased 7% YOY to $53B.
Adobe saw the deepest discounts for electronics, which will peak at 31% off the listed price, followed by toys (28%), apparel (25%), and computers (22%). US Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) usage crossed the $1B milestone, representing a 4.2% increase YOY. As expected, the vast majority of BNPL transactions happened on mobile devices (79.4%). In a survey of 1,000 consumers, Adobe found that shoppers were more likely to use BNPL for electronics, apparel, toys, and furniture, which ties to the key categories consumers traded up for during BFCM.
Cyber Monday was the most profitable sales day of the weekend, but Adobe noted that this is the second holiday season in a row where Black Friday growth outpaced Cyber Monday. These results confirm that BFCM’s cultural traditions remain very much intact; they are merely shifting slightly as consumers strive to make savvy decisions while enjoying the essence of the season.
AI Influence Comes to a Head
As consumers clamored for the best deals, they turned to reliable sources like AI and social media to streamline the process. Adobe found that traffic from AI platforms to US retail sales increased 670%, making up a significant share of the season’s total AI traffic (+760%). Looking at pure dollars and cents, Salesforce found that AI and agents influenced $9.3B in global online sales.
At first glance, these numbers are jaw-dropping. Yet global adoption rates call for this level of growth. Last year, AI platforms were a minor blip in the shopping journey, and now, consumers across demographics and geos are embracing ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and other tools every day.
A growth story that is worth digging deeper into is social media, which Adobe called out as a “standout” this season. Its share of revenue on Cyber Monday was 3.6%, a 56.5% increase YOY. Meanwhile, the revenue share for affiliates, partners, and influencers was 21.8%, up 7.4%.
What We’re Watching the Rest of the Season
Salesforce data found that more US consumers opened their wallets for luxury apparel this BFCM, a departure from the broader 2025 decline in the luxury sector. The luxury apparel and accessory market was upended for most of 2025 following “liberation day” reciprocal tariffs, which launched numerous direct-from-manufacturer social media “psyops”—TikTok accounts run by factories in China showing that luxury goods from popular brands that were supposedly made in Italy were being made in China. The provenance of the videos and their claims is still as uncertain as the tariffs that spawned their creation, but the fallout is real. The luxury sector is expected to contract by as much as 5% in 2025, according to Bain.
One of the findings in our New Modes consumer research was the amount of time Gen Z spent on TikTok for purchase consideration. The growth of TikTok Shop has been exponential; the platform is now on par with eBay in gross merchandise volume, a platform 30 years its senior.
The prevalence of TikTok Shop as a channel is also shaping the behavior of the retailers that participate in its programs. TikTok One, the platform where businesses manage creator relationships and their business dealings within the Shop ecosystem, has a rewards and bounty system that incentivizes users to livestream to establish authority in the marketplace.
These incentive programs are pushing creators to livestream from more locations in partnership with a growing number of businesses. The end result is seeing more streamers in public—in the mall—at your local Uniqlo. Creating activation spaces for streamers may be on many retailers' 2026 retail planners as we attempt to convert more attention into dollars.
Updated: 4:20 PM EST, Tuesday, December 2nd, 2025
The holidays are always a time for spectacle, and it is no surprise that the retail industry is driving the most during BFCM, a holiday week that sets the tone for what the collective “we” can expect through the New Year.
Adobe and Salesforce released frequent updates to their calculations on eCommerce sales, AI usage, and even the role of mobile and social as commerce influencers. RetailNext gauged whether the ubiquity of online hit brick-and-mortar where it hurts, and Shopify visualized live commerce on the Exosphere in Las Vegas. From the practical to the bombastic, they had a universal goal: to understand whether ten months of volatility would actually drive people to completely change the way they celebrate and participate in the holidays.
We tapped into these insights in near real time, watching with bated breath to see which predictions would come true and which trends would dominate holiday retail discourse.
From Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, US merchants brought in $44.2B in total online sales, according to Adobe. Globally, online sales grew 7% YOY, reaching $336.6B. Adobe expects deals to linger through the rest of the week, especially in key categories like toys, computers, and electronics. However, Salesforce found that the real winners of BFCM worldwide were active footwear (+16% YOY), home furniture (+13% YOY), and health and beauty (+11% YOY).
These are only two of a vast ecosystem of data points reaffirming that, despite various sources counting the consumer out, they celebrated BFCM with gusto.
Let’s break down what happened, day by day.
Thanksgiving Day Retail Sales: ‘Couch Commerce’ Compounds Growth
“Couch commerce” truly came to a head on Thanksgiving Day, even among those who didn’t formally celebrate. Consumers worldwide spent $35.6B online on Thursday, up 6% over last year, according to Salesforce data, with the most popular categories being home furniture (+27% YOY), active apparel (+12% YOY), and toys and learning (+10% YOY).
US consumers accounted for $8.4B of that spend, a 3% increase from 2024. These consumers essentially used their mobile devices to browse and buy, accounting for 80% of traffic and 75% of digital orders. The most significant growth was seen in active apparel and footwear (+19% YOY), food and beverage (+10% YOY), and luxury apparel (+7% YOY).
A Global Cultural Moment
Despite its start as a US-specific holiday, Black Friday is officially a global moment. Adyen tracked transaction volume across key international markets, comparing Black Friday to a typical Friday in retail, and the results show that the US saw lower growth (2.8X) than other territories.
Across most markets, the peak time for in-store Black Friday shopping was 2 pm, except in the US, where it was 1 pm, suggesting many households waited to recover from their turkey comas before hitting the stores. Online shopping, however, saw more variety, with countries like Sweden (5 pm), France (8 pm), and Germany (9 pm) embracing Black Friday shopping as a nighttime affair.
The ASP Factor
Retail sales rose, but Thanksgiving order volumes fell 2% year over year, indicating the boost came from a higher average selling price (ASP). Salesforce calculated that ASP was up 8% over last year, with the home category, including furniture, decor, and appliances, being hit the hardest (+32% ASP increase). Meanwhile, the ASP for food and beverage categories was up 14%.
We’ve been analyzing how new tariff rules and rates are affecting consumer spending for more than 7 months. For most of that time, the headlines felt like a lot of fear mongering; during the summer, merchants saw shoppers frontload purchases ahead of new tariffs, especially electronics. However, a higher ASP, coupled with flat year-over-year discounting, means we’re starting to see the effects as retailers fight to protect margins.
Adobe’s Thanksgiving analysis differed slightly from Salesforce’s, particularly in pricing and promotions. On Thanksgiving, the saw shoppers “trade up” to higher-ticket items in categories like electronics, where “share-of-units sold” for the most expensive goods increased by 58%. The company tracked similar patterns for sporting goods (up 53%), appliances (up 44%), personal care (up 36%), and tools/home improvement (up 30%). This data diverges from the media narrative that emphasized consumers trading down to stretch their budgets.
The “trade-up” strategy could be attributed to the fact that the merchants Adobe analyzed took a different approach to discounting. The company noted that they tracked “stronger than anticipated” deals on Thanksgiving Day. For example, discounts for electronics peaked at 28% off the listed price, a rate Adobe did not expect until Cyber Monday.
Evolved Sources of Holiday Shopping Influence
Salesforce found that the total number of service conversations with AI agents has surged by 28% YOY from Nov. 25-27. Additionally, the company found that retailers who have agents on their websites saw 9% sales growth on Thanksgiving alone.
Both Adobe and Salesforce also confirmed social media’s enhanced role in the holiday shopping experience. Adobe found that social media’s share of online revenue was 5%, up 30% YOY. Affiliates and partners (including influencers) garnered nearly a 22% share of revenue, a clear continuation of influencer-led media consumption we tracked during the back-to-school shopping season. While Salesforce didn’t track influencer-driven sales specifically, it noted that 15% of global Thanksgiving traffic and 18% of US traffic came from social media referrals, up 10% YOY for both.
Black Friday Retail Sales: The Day Stays True to Its Roots
Black Friday’s origins can be traced back to the 1950s in Philadelphia, but it quickly became a Retail Shopping Holiday that marked the moment merchants officially went into the black.
The cultural customs followed: sleeping outside of stores to get 5 am doorbuster deals, trampling your peers to get your hands on the new, hot toy, and bopping from store to store with your family in tow. Despite numerous thinkpieces saying the contrary, this year’s Black Friday sales results confirm that the holiday is very much alive and well.
Deloitte’s Lupine Skelly said it best:
“People have been trying to kill off Black Friday for 20 years…Black Friday is not dead.”
Doorbusters or Bust
Indeed, even in our current era of hyper-connectivity, where we’re in a constant state of purchase consideration and efficient product comparison, we still cannot say goodbye to the Black Friday Doorbuster. Driven by our growing love for nostalgia and community-based retail experiences, this year was especially strong for in-store deals and activations.
“It seems that Gen Z and Alpha are here for the near-death experiences of Black Fridays of yesteryear, and this year, retailers were all too happy to indulge them.”
- Phillip Jackson, The Senses
The most popular offers at early-opening stores were gift bags and gift cards. Kohl’s, Lowe’s, and Target each handed out a swag bag and gift card drawing for the first 200 and 100 customers in line, respectively. For Target, the initial surge of social media hype turned into roaring outrage as consumers did live “unbaggings” of their free totes and took inventory of their free goods.
Some retailers got more creative with their giveaways, turning them into viral-ready challenges. Discounter Five Below gamified their doorbuster event (a $25 “all you can Squishmallow” sale) by daring 7 am shoppers to take the “squish” in the mallow literally—the deal had a limit of 10 per customer, and customers had to fit them all in an impossibly small tote. Each store had a limit of 15 totes.
Retailers spun up these nostalgic “embodied” store experiences to bring customers back to their stores. Did it actually get people to leave their couches (and lackluster deals) and brave the crowds? In-store traffic analytics company RetailNext found that brick-and-mortar footfall dropped 3.6% YOY on Black Friday, with retailers seeing an even greater drop (-8.6%) on Saturday, Nov. 29. Yet data from Adyen adds nuance to the conversation. The payments company found that the average basket size (ATV) for in-store Black Friday purchases was 28% higher than for online purchases. Moreover, Colliers found that traffic to more “destination centers” like the Mall of America (+10.4%) and the American Dream (+8.8%) grew the most because of their strong tenant mix and emphasis on holistic experience design.
The Digital Dichotomy
Ecommerce sales continued to climb on Black Friday, with Adobe reporting $11.8B in US online sales, a new record from 2024’s $10.8B. During peak shopping hours, 10 am to 2 pm, online shoppers were spending $12.5M each minute. Salesforce’s US numbers were relatively similar ($18B); however, its global results were even more staggering, climbing 6% YOY to $79B.
ASP continued to wreak havoc on shopping carts (+7%), impacting home goods (+24% YOY), electronics (+7% YOY), and general apparel (+6% YOY) the most in the US. As a result, order volumes (-1% YOY) and units per transaction (-2% YOY) both fell, revealing the true dichotomy of holiday shopping online: one expects not just an easy shopping experience online, but an effective one. That means finding the best product at the best possible price.
Despite research indicating that consumers were searching for deals that aligned with their strapped budgets, retailers continued to hold out on the mass discounts typically promised during this commerce holiday weekend.
Klaviyo found that although discounts peaked on Black Friday and continued through the weekend, none of the big deal days offered more than a 30% discount. In fact, brands that traded discounts for more precise personalization and relevant outreach saw more growth than their competitors.
Instead, consumers were looking for more meaningful modes of engagement—typically through AI and agents. According to Salesforce, $14.2B in global online sales and $3B in US online sales were driven by AI and agents on Black Friday. Agentic customer service conversations increased by 71% over the week prior, and the total number of tasks completed by eCommerce agents (such as updating delivery addresses) increased by 84% over the same period.
The Wellness Resurgence
The Future Commerce WOM Index has consistently found that beauty and health products have suffered from severely low WOM rates. Beauty and health are such complex yet intimate categories. Based on science and ingredient effectiveness, brand and product usage can also be influenced by individual needs, preferences, and even physical attributes, such as allergies.
Word of mouth can guide consumers to the right products for their unique needs and goals. While WOM is low, these were highly in-demand categories on Black Friday, especially among Shopify merchants selling vitamins, supplements, and skincare products.
Cyber Monday Retail Sales: A New Milestone for Holiday Commerce
Despite several days of growth, Cyber Monday remains the most significant shopping holiday of all time. Specifically, Cyber Monday 2025 was the biggest online shopping day ever, exceeding Adobe’s initial projections. Total online sales for Cyber Monday landed at $14.25B in the US, a 6.3% increase YOY, as consumers plucked up Bluetooth headphones (sales up 1,850%), video game consoles (sales up 1,800%), fridges and freezers (sales up 1,700%), and other highly considered products. Salesforce saw similar growth nationally ($13.6B, up 6% YOY), while global sales increased 7% YOY to $53B.
Adobe saw the deepest discounts for electronics, which will peak at 31% off the listed price, followed by toys (28%), apparel (25%), and computers (22%). US Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) usage crossed the $1B milestone, representing a 4.2% increase YOY. As expected, the vast majority of BNPL transactions happened on mobile devices (79.4%). In a survey of 1,000 consumers, Adobe found that shoppers were more likely to use BNPL for electronics, apparel, toys, and furniture, which ties to the key categories consumers traded up for during BFCM.
Cyber Monday was the most profitable sales day of the weekend, but Adobe noted that this is the second holiday season in a row where Black Friday growth outpaced Cyber Monday. These results confirm that BFCM’s cultural traditions remain very much intact; they are merely shifting slightly as consumers strive to make savvy decisions while enjoying the essence of the season.
AI Influence Comes to a Head
As consumers clamored for the best deals, they turned to reliable sources like AI and social media to streamline the process. Adobe found that traffic from AI platforms to US retail sales increased 670%, making up a significant share of the season’s total AI traffic (+760%). Looking at pure dollars and cents, Salesforce found that AI and agents influenced $9.3B in global online sales.
At first glance, these numbers are jaw-dropping. Yet global adoption rates call for this level of growth. Last year, AI platforms were a minor blip in the shopping journey, and now, consumers across demographics and geos are embracing ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and other tools every day.
A growth story that is worth digging deeper into is social media, which Adobe called out as a “standout” this season. Its share of revenue on Cyber Monday was 3.6%, a 56.5% increase YOY. Meanwhile, the revenue share for affiliates, partners, and influencers was 21.8%, up 7.4%.
What We’re Watching the Rest of the Season
Salesforce data found that more US consumers opened their wallets for luxury apparel this BFCM, a departure from the broader 2025 decline in the luxury sector. The luxury apparel and accessory market was upended for most of 2025 following “liberation day” reciprocal tariffs, which launched numerous direct-from-manufacturer social media “psyops”—TikTok accounts run by factories in China showing that luxury goods from popular brands that were supposedly made in Italy were being made in China. The provenance of the videos and their claims is still as uncertain as the tariffs that spawned their creation, but the fallout is real. The luxury sector is expected to contract by as much as 5% in 2025, according to Bain.
One of the findings in our New Modes consumer research was the amount of time Gen Z spent on TikTok for purchase consideration. The growth of TikTok Shop has been exponential; the platform is now on par with eBay in gross merchandise volume, a platform 30 years its senior.
The prevalence of TikTok Shop as a channel is also shaping the behavior of the retailers that participate in its programs. TikTok One, the platform where businesses manage creator relationships and their business dealings within the Shop ecosystem, has a rewards and bounty system that incentivizes users to livestream to establish authority in the marketplace.
These incentive programs are pushing creators to livestream from more locations in partnership with a growing number of businesses. The end result is seeing more streamers in public—in the mall—at your local Uniqlo. Creating activation spaces for streamers may be on many retailers' 2026 retail planners as we attempt to convert more attention into dollars.
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