Trend Report: How Did Thanksgiving and Christmas E-Commerce Performance Stack Up?
Backbone’s latest analytics report shows Thanksgiving was about spending and Christmas was about giving
2023 was an intriguing year for e-commerce—there were ups and downs when comparing performance year-over-year, and there was a clear consumer spending trend when looking at the data holistically.
Backbone’s analytics team crunched the numbers for various recreation and lifestyle brands, comparing the 2023 holiday season to the previous year. Read our findings, below.
BFCM Dominated
Consumers were spending and ordering big during Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM), leading to a 13.9% increase in revenue and a 10.7% increase in transactions YoY. Read Backbone’s full report on BFCM.
Flip it and Reverse it
Christmas showed a slightly different trend with an increase in transactions, but a decline in revenue year-over-year:
- Compared to the previous year, there was a median, slight year-over-year transaction growth of 0.22%
- Revenue declined by -4.26% from 2022
Similarly, when analyzing the last five months of 2023 (August-December) compared to 2022, Backbone found:
- Strong median, year-over-year transaction growth of 2.09%
- A decline in revenue of -3.72% year-over-year
In the back half of the year, performance peaked for short moments in time. Considering a strong summer, the 2023 holiday season was impressive from an e-commerce perspective.
Further, this data shows a clear trend in consumer purchasing behavior for the latter part of 2023: people were ordering more but spending less—with the exception being BFCM, where high spending suggests sales from brands influenced purchasing decisions.
Will this stand true for the entirety of 2023? Stay tuned for Backbone’s comprehensive industry benchmark report for 2023—coming soon.
Interested in learning more? Reach out to us at info@backbone.media.
