1929’s “Black Thursday” was a stock market crash that marked the beginning of the great depression. 1987’s “Black Monday” was also a devastating blow to financial markets that decimated $1.71 trillion of wealth in a single day.
Despite its similar name, Black Friday is the moniker of a much more benign phenomenon — the biggest and most publicized shopping day of the year.
Every year on the Friday after Thanksgiving, millions of turkey-stuffed Americans used to overcome their tryptophan-induced tiredness to brave early-morning shopping center crowds in search of the best deals on the hottest products ahead of the winter holidays.
And while this still occurs to some extent today, although much of the fervor has moved online, where cold temperatures, overnight camping, and dangerous retail stampedes can be easily avoided. And since the bulk of Black Friday shopping now occurs “from the warm glow of shoppers’ smartphone screens,” it’s become quite a bit easier to measure its volume in recent years.
So, just how big of an event is Black Friday (and the subsequent “Cyber Week”)? How much have Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales volume grown over time? And will 2024’s Black Friday be the biggest ever?
Here’s what you should know.
Related: Black Friday 2024: Should you buy online or in-store?
When did the day after Thanksgiving become Black Friday?
According to conventional wisdom, the concept of Black Friday, as we know it today, emerged in the 1950s, when police in Philidelphia began to complain of large crowds appearing in the city the day after Thanksgiving to cruise retail shops for deals ahead of the Christmas holiday. That being said, it would be several decades before Black Friday would grow into the marketing tool and cultural phenomenon it is now.
According to Nancy Koehn, a historian at Harvard Business School, retailers really began to invest heavily in the concept of Black Friday in the 1970s and 80s by marketing it as a discounted holiday shopping occasion and competing with one another to offer steeper discounts and earlier shopping hours.
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The fervor continued to grow in the 1990s and 2000s, during which time camping out overnight on Thanksgiving to be the first in line for doorbuster electronic deals on Black Friday became common.
In the modern day, Black Friday remains well-cemented in the minds of shoppers, especially those on the younger half of the age spectrum. 57% of Gen Z and 57% of Millenials claim to understand Black Friday “very well,” according to a survey published by Statista in November 2024. The event is also familiar to older generations, although to a lesser degree, with 46% of Gen X and 34% of Baby Boomers claiming to be intimately familiar with the holiday shopping phenomenon.
Online Black Friday sales have increased every year since 2019 with the exception of 2022.
Adobe Analytics
Black Friday sales volume by year
Since 2019, consumers have spent more money online shopping on Black Friday than they did the year before, with one exception — on Black Friday 2022, online shoppers spent about $410 million less than they did in 2021. At the time, the inflation rate had been above 6% for a year, which could help explain the slight decline in Black Friday shopping.
Here’s how much consumers spent online on Black Friday each year from 2019 to 2023:
Adobe Analytics, CapitalOne
YearOnline Black Friday spending
2024 (projected)
$10.80 billion
2023
$9.80 billion
2022
$9.12 billion
2021
$9.53 billion
2020
$9.00 billion
2019
$7.40 billion
Online Cyber Monday sales have increased every year since 2019 with the exception of 2021.
Adobe Analytics
Cyber Monday sales volume by year
Much like Black Friday, online Cyber Monday revenues have increased every year since 2019 with a single (and relatively small) exception — this time in 2021 instead of 2022. In November of 2021, inflation had only been above the Fed’s 2% target for about 8 months, and Cyber Monday sales only dropped by about $100 million compared to the year before.
Here’s how much consumers spent online on Cyber Monday each year from 2019 to 2023:
Adobe Analytics, CapitalOne
YearOnline Cyber Monday Spending
2024 (projected)
$13.20 billion
2023
$12.40 billion
2022
$11.30 billion
2021
$10.70 billion
2020
$10.80 billion
2019
$9.40 billion
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Sales projections for Black Friday & Cyber Monday 2024: Will they be the biggest ever?
Aside from some inflation and supply chain-related hiccups, Black Friday and Cyber Monday have been growing steadily in popularity, and more and more consumer dollars have been flowing into online retail each year.
Over the past decade or so, retailers have been beginning their Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions earlier and earlier — and extending them longer and longer, muddying the waters of which sales do and don’t count as part of these events. Cyber Monday has become Cyber Week, and Black Friday, according to some, has been expanded to Black November.
Adobe Analytics, one of the most-cited holiday shopping statistic authorities, shared a variety of projections regarding sales volume on Black Friday and Cyber Monday proper as well as the holiday shopping season as a whole. Here’s what 2024’s Black Friday sales could look like, according to Adobe:
Projected Black Friday 2024 online sales: $10.80 billionProjected Thanksgiving Day 2024 online sales: $6.1 billionProjected Cyber Monday 2024 online sales: $13.2 billionProjected overall online consumer sales November 2024: $135.50 billionProjected overall online consumer sales December 2024: $105.30 billion
While Amazon’s exact share of the Black Friday pie isn’t exactly clear, the company commanded a 63% market share of the online retail space in 2023.
What is Amazon’s market share of Black Friday sales?
Amazon is the undisputed behemoth of online shopping in the U.S., with $574.8 billion in total sales and an e-commerce market share of almost 63% in 2023, according to Statista. The company’s next-largest competitor, Walmart, had about a sixth of Amazon’s online sales volume that year.
But what does Amazon’s dominance of the overall online retail market look like on Black Friday — and during the rest of the holiday shopping season?
Unfortunately, we don’t have a clear answer to this question, but we do have a series of related statistics that shed some light on how pervasive Amazon is in the holiday shopping arena:
In a 2024 survey of 1,000 Americans by Drive Research, 85% of respondents said they planned to conduct some of their Black Friday shopping on Amazon. Comparatively, only 59% said the same about Walmart. According to e-commerce marketing firm WiserNotify, Amazon accounts for about 17.7% of total Black Friday sales, although no source is provided for this statistic. 35% of respondents to Goldman Sachs’ 2024 holiday survey listed Amazon as their top holiday shopping destination. An article on Money & Markets claims that $1 out of every $5 spent during the holidays is spent at Amazon.
The takeaway
Love it or lament it, Black Friday (and the rest of the highly commercialized and ever-expanding holiday shopping season) is here to stay, growing year over year, and showing no signs of slowing down. In fact, 2024 is poised to see the highest Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales of all time.
Luckily for the crowd-avoidant, the bulk of holiday shopping volume (about 71%, according to Demandsage) has moved online. And when it comes to online holiday shopping, Amazon is the clear leader among the major e-commerce retailers competing for holiday traffic.
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