American e-commerce and cloud services giant Amazon (AMZN. US) has released details of its online shopping frenzy during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Amazon expects these large-scale online shopping transactions to take place during the busy extended holiday online shopping event from November 21 to December 2. During last year's Black Friday to Cyber Monday shopping frenzy, global consumers made the largest number of online purchases on Amazon's e-commerce platform to date.
This e-commerce giant points out that its long-term customer base may reach millions of transactions in over 35 categories, including electronics, home, beauty, and fashion, such as Sonos, Staub, and Supergoop! Popular products, as well as Levi's latest denim products.
Amazon customers can also choose to purchase some of the hottest toy products of the current shopping season at any time, including flagship products from popular toy brands such as Squishmallows, Furby, and Tonies. Amazon's e-commerce platform also plans to offer some of the cheapest popular must-have items of the year, such as matching pajamas and holiday classic clothing, starting at only $6, and a rare discount of up to 40% on Amazon Essentials jackets.
In addition to the online shopping frenzy, Amazon will also become the focus of the global sports industry on Black Friday, as Amazon's Prime Video will play the highly anticipated American football game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Las Vegas Raiders.
Last year, Amazon's e-commerce platform officially announced that the 11 day global online shopping carnival held from November 17 to November 27 was the largest scale event on Amazon's platform to date, compared to the previous years' frenzy of online shopping from "Black Friday" to "Cyber Monday". During the 11 day online shopping frenzy, Amazon statistics show that global online shoppers purchased over 1 billion items on the Amazon shopping platform. In addition, out of the one billion items ordered between Black Friday and Cyber Monday last year, over 500 million were from independent seller stores on the Amazon marketplace, with the majority coming from small and medium-sized enterprise sellers worldwide.
This year's "Black Friday" online shopping festival is on November 29th, while the "Cyber Monday" online shopping discount festival that Western consumers are looking forward to is on December 2nd. The specific dates of these two online shopping festivals are the latest dates that have appeared on their calendars for many years.
Prior to this year's Black Friday to Cyber Monday online shopping carnival, many consumer spending data showed that the spending levels of European and American consumers were still very strong. The month on month increase in US retail sales in September exceeded economists' expectations driven by widespread consumption growth, indicating that even in the face of long-term high interest rate pressures, US consumer spending remains resilient and continues to provide a strong driving force for the US economy. After a 0.1% month on month increase in August, unadjusted retail sales in the United States unexpectedly increased by 0.4% in September (economists generally expect it to be 0.3%).
One of Amazon's biggest competitors, Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify (SHOP. US), has released its latest financial report that exceeds Wall Street's expectations. The company's financial report shows that its total revenue in the third quarter increased by about 26% to $2.16 billion, higher than the average analyst expectation of $2.12 billion. This is also the sixth consecutive quarter in which the e-commerce company's revenue growth has exceeded 25% (excluding logistics).
More importantly, in the third quarter, Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify's Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) reached $69.7 billion, a year-on-year increase of 24%, exceeding analysts' widely expected $67.8 billion, indicating that online shopping spending by European and American consumers remains very strong. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, Shopify management predicts a total revenue growth of 25% -29%, with analysts generally expecting it to be around 23%.