Key learnings from Amazon’s 2022 festive shopping season
1 February 2023
Want to learn about advertising for shopping events? See more in our complete guide to festive season marketing.
Following the biggest Prime Day event ever, customers continued to enjoy shopping and purchased a record number of products from the Amazon store over the five days from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday in 2022, when compared to previous Thanksgiving holiday weekends. The unofficial start of the holiday shopping season began in October, and it was a standout shopping weekend during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deal events for Amazon customers, as well as a huge festive shopping season overall.
US Thanksgiving holiday shopping weekend best-selling items
Amazon had its biggest Thanksgiving festive season shopping weekend ever, with customers around the world purchasing hundreds of millions of products between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday.1 Additionally, customers generated more than $1 billion in sales for small businesses in the US.2
Some of the best-selling categories over the Thanksgiving holiday shopping weekend were Home, Fashion, Toys, Beauty and Amazon devices.3
The best-selling items on Amazon were the Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick and Apple AirPods. Other top-selling items included Hasbro Gaming CONNECT 4, Burt’s Bees Christmas Gifts, apparel from Champion, apparel and shoes from New Balance, the Amazon smart plug, Echo Show, and Nintendo Switch. Best-selling items from small businesses included games like What Do You Meme? Family Edition, Taco vs. Burrito – The Strategic Family Friendly Card Game, and Kids Against Maturity: Card game for kids and families. Customers also bought millions of Amazon devices, including Echo, Ring, Blink, Kindle and Fire TV products.4
Worldwide festive season shopping
The shopping didn’t stop there. Customers purchased more items than ever from Amazon’s selling partners – most of which are small and medium-sized businesses – for a record-breaking festive season for Amazon.5 Products from third-party sellers represented almost 60% of the units sold in the Amazon store.6 Amazon customers purchased nearly half a billion items from small businesses in the US alone during the festive season.7 Some of the trending small-business categories included Home, Beauty, Kitchen, Toys and Apparel.
How brands can continue holiday success
Online shopping continues to grow as a popular way for customers to do their shopping – digital retail in the US accounted for 21.6% of total retail sales, up from 20.9% in 2021, according to a Mastercard SpendingPulse report.8 After the festive season, think about how to re-engage festive season customers by observing festive shopping insights that could indicate interest in the goods that customers will be interested in next. Continuing to advertise to shoppers who took advantage of festive season promotions is a great way to continue building customer loyalty.
The upcoming festive season this year bring more opportunities for shopping campaigns to continue to succeed. Upcoming events on the retail holiday calendar in the US include Valentine’s Day, International Women’s Day and Easter.