Retailers push deep discounts on Cyber Monday

After lackluster spending at U.S. stores on a deals-heavy Black Friday, retailers will be pulling out all the stops with steep promotions on their websites and apps to entice people to buy holiday gifts and other merchandise after the long Thanksgiving weekend.

Retailers have been coaxing cautious U.S. shoppers on Cyber Monday with push notifications, emails, and other ads touting heavily discounted cosmetics, electronics, toys, clothing, and other products. Many including Walmart and Amazon use AI-enabled chatbots on their websites and apps to help customers with queries and drive them to hit '"buy."

With just 23 days before Christmas, the discounts this year have been deeper with shoppers waiting for promotion-heavy days, experts have said.

Spending online in the US is expected to reach $13.2 billion, 6% more than on Cyber Monday a year earlier, according to preliminary estimates from Adobe Inc. That outlay would follow the roughly $10.8 billion Americans spent online on Black Friday, according to Adobe.

With many Americans recently carrying more debt, shoppers are also expected to spend a record $18.5 billion using third-party “buy now, pay later” services for holiday purchases in the last quarter of the year, according to projections by Adobe, which keeps track of devices that use its software to help power more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites.

This year, big retailers like Walmart and Amazon have also relied on generative AI customer service and search features to make it easier for shoppers to find products on websites and mobile apps.

Across the first half of Cyber Week - the week starting ahead of Thanksgiving and ending on Cyber Monday - those retailers that used GenAI tools for customer service saw a 9% higher purchase rate by users, according to estimates by Salesforce.