Adobe AI forecasts $143 billion in bumper US holiday sales

Adobe announced that it is forecasting retailers to have huge holiday season 2019 sales, predicted by it's AI technology "Adobe Sensei" it expects that between the year-end shopping period (November 1st to December 31st) that online sales could reach up to $134 billion, up 14.1% from last year.

Thanksgiving Day sales are expected to be around $4.4 billion with sales accounting for around 20% of all year-end shopping up 19.5% from 2018. Cyber week will also see big gains with Cyber Monday expected to generate $29 billion in sales.

Adobe points out that smartphones will play a key role in holiday sales this season accounting for 47% of retail holiday shopping being processed through smartphones. Americans will spend $14 billion more up from around $10 billion last year on their e-commerce shopping through their smartphones, accounting for over half of e-commerce shopping during the holiday season.

Adobe uses its machine learning technology in Adobe Sensei to identify a number of market insights, being fed information from a number of sources including small, medium, and larger retailers over a number of merchandise categories.

Retailers are expected to launch products and promotions quicker than ever due to the holiday season seeing six fewer days than usual between Cyber Monday and Christmas Day, with around $1 billion expected to be lost in potential revenue. CNBC reports that retailer Walmart is already gearing up offering holiday deals in stores and online, with other retailers such as Best Buy and Target looking to follow suit.

John Copeland, General Manager of Adobe Marketing and Consumer Insights said:

"The compressed shopping cycle will see retailers launching offers earlier than ever before, with fewer days to spend, Adobe Analytics predicts that BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store) will be more popular than ever before."

Online and offline retailers are hoping to cash in with one out of five dollars being spent by customers during the holiday season, Adobe predicts that the most anticipated items will be video games, toys, and consoles such as the Nintendo Switch Lite and the retro Sega Genesis Mini.