Amazon Reports Largest-Ever Thanksgiving Shopping Weekend

Amazon said this year’s Thanksgiving shopping weekend was its largest ever.

The retail giant said Wednesday (Nov. 30) that the period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday — which it has dubbed the “Turkey 5” weekend — saw customers purchase “hundreds of millions of products” without providing any further details.

Many of the company’s best sellers were tech items, such as Amazon’s own Echo Dot and Fire Stick, as well as Apple’s AirPods and the Nintendo Switch.

But consumers also supported smaller businesses, the company said in the release, to the tune of $1 billion in small business sales in the United States.

This is happening at a time when Amazon commands 45% of the domestic eCommerce market, compared to rival Walmart’s 5.4%.

Amazon continues to flex its eCommerce muscles as consumers increasingly shop online, allowing it to outpace Walmart not just in categories like durable goods, but also in sporting goods, hobbies, games, and other items people purchase as holiday gifts.

Whether you call it Turkey 5 or Cyber 5, a record number of Americans shopped during the Thanksgiving holiday.

As PYMNTS reported Tuesday (Nov. 29), the National Retail Federation (NRF) said 196.7 million Americans made purchases either in-store or online during that period. That figure is 9% greater than last year, and the highest in the five years the NRF has reported this data.

But that demand could have been higher in a better climate. PYMNTS research showed that 33% of shoppers who wanted to make purchases during the Thanksgiving weekend opted out due to cash and credit concerns.

Of the people who did shop this weekend, 45% of paycheck-to-paycheck consumers relied heavily on credit and financing to capture Black Friday deals, paying for almost 60% of their purchases with these methods.

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