Dive Brief:
- Capping off the holiday season, shoppers spent $257.8 billion online in the U.S. from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, marking a 6.8% year-over-year increase, according to Adobe Analytics data released Wednesday.
- Buy now, pay later usage reached a high during the seasonal period by contributing $20 billion in online spend, up 9.8% compared to 2024.
- Generative AI tools also contributed to more U.S. e-commerce attention during the holidays, with a 693.4% year-over-year traffic increase in shoppers clicking through to retail sites.
Dive Insight:
AI was a hot topic in the retail industry last year, and consumers showed their growing interest in using it to support shopping habits during the holiday period.
Even so, the user base remains modest despite the significant year-over-year growth, per Adobe. Retailers throughout 2025 increased their investment in building their own AI shopping assistants and collaborating with external platforms in an effort to meet consumers where they are.
“This 2025 holiday season, consumers embraced generative AI more than ever as a shopping assistant in their purchasing decisions,” Adobe Digital Insights Lead Analyst Vivek Pandya said in a statement. “Competitive discounts and flexible payment options like Buy Now Pay Later also contributed to driving record spend of $257.8 billion throughout this holiday season.”
The electronics, apparel and furniture categories made up about 54% of the period’s overall spend, with all three merchandise groups experiencing year-over-year growth. The groceries category saw a 10.2% jump in spend, and cosmetics increased by 9.3%.
Consumers were focused on value heading into the holidays, and while Adobe said discounts were strong, many categories saw relatively minor increases in online discounts year over year. In electronics, Adobe’s data found discounts during the period peaked at 30.9% off listed price compared to 30.1% in 2024. The toys category discount peak grew from 28% off last year to 29.6%, apparel jumped from 23.2% to 25.1%, televisions from 24.2% to 24.3%, appliances from 19.2% to 20.2% and furniture’s peak dropped from 19% to 18.8%.
Shoppers were most likely to use BNPL during the holiday period for products such as electronics, apparel, toys and furniture, per an Adobe survey of over 1,000 consumers conducted in November.
Data from Bank of America Institute economists in December showed that consumers were more reliant on financing options such as BNPL and credit cards during the holiday season. Additionally, research from marketing intelligence platform Sooth suggested BNPL default rates could grow as much as 50% in the first quarter of 2026.
