When the holiday shopping season goes into full swing in 2025, forecasters will be put to the test.
This year, the Cyber 5 dates fall on Nov. 27 (Thanksgiving this year) through Dec. 1 (Cyber Monday). That period encompasses the season’s busiest days for shopping online and offline, all leading up to the biggest day of the year for ecommerce.
What holiday shopping forecasters project
So far, in a year marked by uncertainty for retailers, thanks to new tariffs-related expenses and macroeconomic factors, expectations have been mixed. However, thanks to recent data and holiday shopping forecasts from Adobe, Deloitte, Salesforce and other sources, online retailers can reasonably expect to see a handful of key trends play out this season.
Here are five of them.
1. Increased holiday shopping on mobile and with BNPL
56.1% of online sales over the 2025 holiday weeks will come from mobile devices, analysts projected in Adobe’s annual forecast. If that happens, it would be good enough to account for $142.7 billion in sales, up 8.5% from the comparable period year earlier.
In the meantime, Adobe also sees shoppers utilizing buy now, pay later (BNPL) options for $20.2 billion in online purchases throughout November and December 2025. That would be $2 billion more than in 2024, possibly showing growing reliance in the face of household economic pressures.
2. Growing use of AI for holiday purchases
Online retailers, including Williams-Sonoma, Pandora and SharkNinja, have bulked up on their use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools for their ecommerce sites ahead of the holiday season. And data shows that they may be better positioned to serve online shoppers — especially younger age groups — as a result.
A recent Deloitte survey about how shoppers will use AI over the holiday season found that 33% of U.S. consumers expect to incorporate generative AI tools at some point in their individual processes. Meanwhile, Adobe and Salesforce analysts also anticipate AI use growing, as both continue to add generative AI features to their ecommerce platforms.
As for how important AI will be, Salesforce’s holiday projections show AI and agents could be responsible for $263 billion in global online sales, including $51 billion in the U.S. alone.
3. Holiday shoppers reconsidering resale options
Salesforce specifically noted that it sees consumer behavior benefiting the resale sector, with tariff-related prices playing a role and Gen Z and Millennial shoppers among those most interested. Economic concerns may not be the only motivation as this trend plays out, though, with sustainability concerns under consideration, too.
Resale platforms are preparing, with ThredUp’s 2025 Consumer Holiday Report showing consumers plan to allocate almost 40% of their holiday budgets to secondhand gifts. That would be up from a typical level of 30%, according to ThredUp. Others, including eBay, Phia and Poshmark, have been preparing.
4. Online sales growth continuing to outpace overall growth
If Deloitte projections are correct, online sales this holiday season are poised to grow at a similar rate as they did year over year in 2024. That growth of up to 9% in 2025 would be good enough to reach a total of $305 billion to $310.7 billion from November to January.
In the meantime, Deloitte sees year-over-year growth for overall holiday sales slumping to 2.9% to 3.4%, down from the 4.2% growth observed in 2024.
5. Bigger and earlier discounts
In 2024, shoppers tended to wait out the first four days of the Cyber 5 for deals on Cyber Monday, even as Cyber Monday’s share of ecommerce sales over the five days fell slightly to 32.4% from 32.8% in 2023. In 2025, Salesforce projects that the average discount rate across the U.S. and Canada will be higher than it was in 2024, reaching 29% for these five days.
Elsewhere, Adobe assessed that, in addition, pre-holiday season discounts in October would prime shoppers to begin earlier than they did in 2024. Examples have already appeared in the form of fall promotions from Amazon, Walmart and Target.
Of course, it’s too early to know for sure if U.S. online holiday sales will top the $241.4 billion that they saw in 2024 — but for now, these forecasts seem to indicate that the question will not be if they grow, but rather by how much.
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