Helicopters Are Out, eVTOLs Are In?
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Are small aircraft about to take on Uber? Motley Fool Money starts now.
Welcome to Motley Fool Money. I'm Travis Hoyim, joined by Lou Whiteman and Rachel Warren. We are going to talk about EVTOL, electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft today. But first, we want to get an update on the retail segment. Black Friday, which felt like Black Friday month to me, is now behind us officially. We even had Cyber Monday. So, Rachel, what did we learn about this critical shopping season?
Yeah, I think there were a lot of analysts that were watching what these numbers would tell us about the health of the consumer. And, you know, the headline numbers look good, but there's more when you dig beneath the surface. So to start off, U.S. consumers spent a record $11.8 billion online on Black Friday. That was a 9.1% increase from 2024. But what's interesting is that nearly 4 in 10 consumers bought fewer items this year. This suggests, obviously, that they're trimming their shopping lists, prioritizing certain purchases. Now, globally, for Black Friday, which is not just a U.S. phenomenon anymore, online sales hit a new peak of $79 billion. What's interesting is that store visits were really a mixed bag.
There was some data that showed there was a slight decline in foot traffic. Consumers are taking a bit more of an intentional approach when they're shopping. Really important to note as well, total spending increased year over year, but at the same time, average selling prices for products were up by around 7%, and the number of units per transaction dropped. So what this indicates is that a lot of the sales growth that we saw on Black Friday was driven by inflation rather than increased purchase volume. And another thing as well that I think speaks to the health of the consumer, usage of buy now, pay later services was up about 9% year over year on Black Friday. So we're seeing a time where consumers are looking for more flexible payment options to manage their budgets as wallets are constrained.
They seem to be more price sensitive, less impulsive. We saw a lot of use of digital tools and AI to compare prices and find the best value for shoppers. So overall, good numbers. But I think we are seeing a consumer that is spending much more cautiously than in past periods.
Lou, I keep looking for signs that the consumer and the economy are getting weaker because I think we get these data points like unemployment is starting to be a problem. Inflation should be something that impacts the economy, you would think negatively, at least in certain places. But then you get numbers like this, and the headline numbers are pretty solid. Is that the real story? Is the inflation piece that Rachel talked about, is that actually the bigger takeaway here that's masking any sort of weakness that we would normally see?
I don't think the weakness is masked. I think Rachel did a good job outlining what is going on behind these numbers. Top line is great. And yeah, it was great. $44 billion in sales from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday. That's great numbers. But it's the volume. It is how much people are buying. Another thing to put on Adobe that tracks all of this, they found an uptick in discounted consumer staples. Amazon was putting toilet paper on sale, too, and people were buying that. It's not necessarily that gifts and holiday spending is driving this. It's also worth noting, U.S. spending grew at just half the pace of global spending. As Rachel said, this is a global phenomenon now. U.S. spending was up 2.6%. Globally, it was 5.3%.
Travis, we've talked about it before, but this all still looks like, whether it's the K-shaped recovery, K-shaped economy, there are haves and have-nots. There is a critical mass of consumers that have the means to spend, and they are spending. that sort of does mask or kind of distract us from the fact that there is pressure on a lot of have-nots, a lot of consumers that are really struggling right now. And that if that number grows, that's really bad news. This one is things, two things can be true at once.
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