According to IBM’s measurements, Black Friday online sales rose 20.7% as mobile sales moved ahead of desktop, through 6 PM. Almost certainly, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) was the primary beneficiary, due to its extremely large share of the e-commerce market.
IBM researchers reported:
The average order value for the mobile and desktop shopper combined for Black Friday is $134.45.
Consumers continue to shop via their mobile devices—mobile traffic exceeded desktop, accounting for 54.4 percent of all online traffic, an increase of 16.6 percent over 2014. Mobile sales are also strong, with 35.3 percent of all online sales coming from mobile devices, an increase of 35.5 percent over last year.
Smartphone shoppers are spending $117.87 per order, an increase of 5.2 percent over 2014. Desktop and tablet had virtually identical average order value of $139.96 and 139.95 respectively
Smartphones remain the holiday shopper’s device of choice. Smartphones are accounting for 43.4 percent of all online traffic, nearly four times that of tablets at 11 percent. Smartphones are surpassing tablets in sales, driving 21.1 percent of online sales (up nearly 80 percent over 2014) versus tablets at 14.1 percent.
Speculating, smartphone use may be driven by the ease with which they can be used in stores. Consumers can compare prices for similar products at other stores and Amazon. This action, known as “showrooming”, is considers one of the behaviors which hurts bricks and mortar retailers the most. On the other hand, a smartphone can be used to pay for items at checkout in the actual store in which the consumer is shopping, a benefit to traditional retailers.
Whichever portable devices are used, much of the revenue will go to Amazon. It expects its revenue in the current quarter to rise as much as 20% to $36 billion, compared to the same quarter last year. While consumers may use e-commerce activity to visit sites operated by brick-and-mortar stores, Amazon’s takeover of American retail will continue to grow
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