Black Friday is one of the biggest days of the year for online consumers and retailers alike. This year, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is reshaping Black Friday shopping — and digital consumers and retailers must plan accordingly. The coronavirus pandemic will likely cause Black Friday shopping to decline this year. As such, many digital retailers are launching early Black Friday sales, so they can capture consumers’ interest ahead of the competition.

How is it already near the end of October? We know our retailer customers have been heads-down thinking about code freezes and hypercare during the high season as we approach the holidays. Disruption and pivoting quickly to meet changing customer expectations is nothing new to the retail industry.

This is the first in a series of posts we’ll be publishing on trends we’re seeing in the retail industry and how IT organizations tasked with deploying and maintaining flawless digital customer experiences can take advantage of PagerDuty to ensure always-on reliability. It’s been a tough year for retail.

The five-day period from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday is known as the Cyber Five Weekend (also known as Cyber 5). Forbes estimates that people spent $3.7 billion on Thanksgiving Day in 2018. They approximate that over 165 million people shopped over the entire weekend. This is a 16.5% increase year over year. On Black Friday, people spent $6.2 billion online, with a 23.6% year-over-year growth.