Black Friday 2025 underscored a significant evolution in holiday shopping, with retailers navigating a complex landscape of consumer pressures and shifting engagement. While overall sales figures showed growth, the underlying dynamics revealed a mixed bag of winners and losers, primarily influenced by persistent inflation and changing shopper behavior. As Circana's Chief Retail Advisor, Marshal Cohen, observed, "The Black Friday that we have come to know and love has changed." This year's shopping event unfolded against a backdrop of consumers grappling with reduced federally funded support programs and ongoing inflation. Retailers, in turn, faced declining consumer sentiment despite continued spending. Cohen highlighted the paradox: "We've kind of put ourselves in an interesting position of making Black Friday very important, but not as engaged and not a frenzy and not as much of a purchase urgency that we've seen in years past." The traditional single-day focus has also blurred, transforming into a multi-day savings event, making early assessments challenging. CI&T Global Director of Retail Strategy and Insights, Melissa Minkow, commented, "I think it’s too fluid and too confusing at this point to limit Black Friday to just one day given how frequently consumers are being offered deals." A clearer picture is expected after the full Thanksgiving week and Cyber Monday data emerge. Year-over-year comparisons for 2025 might also be complicated by 2024 being an election year, which has historically dampened retail sales. Initial data offered varied insights into Black Friday's performance. Adobe Analytics reported U.S. e-commerce sales reaching $11.8 billion, a 9.1% year-over-year increase. Salesforce data, however, indicated 3% growth in U.S. online Black Friday sales, totaling $18 billion. Meanwhile, Shopify's offline sales data, collected from its point-of-sale channels, showed a robust 26% year-over-year growth in the U.S. Yet, these top-line figures rarely tell the whole story, revealing a deeper narrative where the consumer often emerged as a key challenge.

Winners

Artificial Intelligence Usage

Artificial intelligence proved to be a significant winner this Black Friday. Adobe's data revealed an astounding 805% surge in AI traffic to U.S. retail websites compared to 2024. AI tools were predominantly utilized across categories such as video games, appliances, electronics, toys, personal care, and baby products. Shoppers arriving at U.S. retail sites via an AI service were 38% more likely to convert to a sale than those from non-AI traffic sources.

Salesforce data further supported this trend, showing a 300% increase in traffic from third-party AI agent channels globally and in the U.S. during the first half of Black Friday. AI and agents collectively drove an estimated $3 billion in U.S. online sales that day. Furthermore, agentic service conversations for customer support on Black Friday grew by 42% compared to Thanksgiving, indicating AI's expanding role in consumer engagement.

Retailers with Exclusive Store Perks

In a market saturated with similar discounts, retailers offering exclusive in-store incentives successfully drew customers. Marshal Cohen observed, "What we saw [Friday] was the only stores that were really busy early in the morning, was basically Target." Target notably offered a free limited-edition tote bag filled with giveaways to the first 100 guests in line. Similarly, Lowe's gave away a bucket of products to its first 50 customers, along with a chance to win an appliance up to $2,000.

Cohen suggested that a lack of "merchandising newness" might have dampened shopper excitement, making unique perks even more crucial. "Build it and they will come, give me a gift, and I'm going to show up," he stated. "So you've got to incentivize the consumer to come to you versus someone else. Now, prices aren't the answer, because everybody's got similar prices."

Losers

Online Order Volume

Despite overall sales growth, online order volume in the U.S. saw a 1% year-over-year decline on Black Friday, according to Salesforce data. This drop, coupled with a 7% increase in average selling prices, signaled continued inflationary pressures on consumers. Caila Schwartz, Director of Consumer Insights at Salesforce, noted, "On the surface, sales were strong, hitting $18 billion, a 3% jump year-over-year. But with the average selling price for goods climbing 7%, U.S. shoppers continued to feel the bite of inflation." Additionally, units per transaction decreased by 2% year-over-year.

Flat Online Discounts for Consumers

Consumers found little relief in online discounts, which remained largely flat compared to 2024. Salesforce reported average discount rates peaking at 28% in the U.S. and 27% globally. Gartner Analyst Brad Jashinsky observed, "Most of the affordable specialty apparel retailers offered the same large percentage off deals for the 2025 Black Friday weekend as they did in 2024." While some non-discounted prices increased, the overall discount messaging remained consistent for many retailers.

Specific categories reflected this trend: electronics discounts peaked at 29% (down from 30.1% in 2024), toys at 30% (up from 28%), televisions nearly flat at 24.3% (vs. 24.2%), and furniture flat at 19%. Melissa Minkow summarized, "It’s pretty much the deal levels and discount levels that retailers have been offering on various products throughout the year."

Buy Now, Pay Later … Sort Of

The increased reliance on Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) options presented a mixed outcome. While it enabled consumers to make purchases during the holidays, driving $747.5 million in online spend (up 8.9% year-over-year per Adobe Analytics), it also raised concerns about future consumer debt. Marshal Cohen commented, "There may not be as many gifts, but they're going to spend as much as they can possibly spend, and worry about it in 2026. That's the big story of what's going to happen post holiday as the consumer has to navigate all of this extended credit that they've utilized." BNPL was predominantly used on mobile devices, accounting for an 80.7% share of usage.

Honorable Mention

Store Traffic

Measuring in-store traffic offered a mixed bag of results. Early data from RetailNext—collected from tens of thousands of U.S. stores across hundreds of brands operating on its smart store platform—indicated a 3.6% decrease in Black Friday traffic compared to 2024. Joe Shasteen, RetailNext’s Global Manager of Advanced Analytics, interpreted this as "The era of the impulse holiday spree is ending. Consumers are in control, and they’re treating Black Friday as one data point in a much longer hunt for value."

Conversely, AI retail insights company Passby reported a 1.17% year-over-year increase in U.S. store traffic based on 53 million analyzed visits. Their data showed a decline in visits for the health and beauty sector, while department stores experienced growth, suggesting a nuanced shift in where consumers chose to shop physically.