As the US Thanksgiving season winds down with flat sales, retailers are trying to lure customers with a wide range of promotions and discounts on cosmetics, electronics, toys, clothing and other merchandise. Cyber MondayAmerica’s largest online shopping event. Retailers are strategizing to attract American shoppers through notifications, mailers and other heavy-handed advertising.
With three weeks to go before Christmas, experts say this year’s discounts have intensified, as shoppers wait for days full of promotions. Retail chain Target announced a two-day “Cyber Monday” starting Sunday, offering up to 50 percent off thousands of items, including video games, home decor and other technology.
Sales at brick-and-mortar stores on Friday rose just 0.7 percent from a year earlier, according to preliminary estimates from payments processor MasterCard. Meanwhile, data firm Facteus reported that sales were actually lower.
To help shoppers find their products on websites and mobile apps, Amazon, Walmart and other online retailers rely on creative AI customer service and search features. Cheyenne Barrens, 29, of Pittsburgh, also used Amazon’s generative AI chatbot services to find out the price of merchandise, as cited by Reuters.
“I’ve found that using Rufus on Amazon has been extremely helpful in determining whether a ‘deal’ is actually a ‘deal,'” said Berens.
Kayla Schwartz, director of consumer insights at Salesforce, a cloud computing company that monitors global shopping data from more than 1.5 billion consumers, explained that GenAI tools, such as chatbots that ask about products online Handles basic customer queries, has helped retailers protect their profit margins. Despite the increased cost.
He also noted that retailers that used GenAI tools for customer service experienced a 15 percent higher purchase rate among customers on Saturdays, according to Salesforce estimates. The high conversion rate served as a “game changer,” Schwartz said.
Adobe Inc. Online spending in the United States on Monday is expected to reach $13.2 billion, up 6 percent from last year’s Cyber Monday, according to preliminary estimates. That’s about 10.8 billion Americans spent online on Black Friday, as reported by Adobe.
Adobe reported that traffic to retail sites from shoppers clicking on chatbots or website links increased 1,800 percent from Black Friday through the weekend.
With many Americans taking on more debt, more are turning to third-party ‘buy now, pay later’ services, and spending on these services is expected to reach $1 billion, according to Adobe estimates. Adobe tracks devices using its software, which powers more than 1 trillion visits to US retail sites.