Canadian retailers are entering the 2025 holiday period with a compressed shopping window and a late Black Friday that is reshaping how promotions and consumer spending unfold across the country.

With Black Friday falling later in November, the interval between Cyber Monday and Christmas Day has shortened, prompting retailers to advance discounts and encourage earlier shopping. At the same time, Canadian consumers, who have been watching prices closely, are responding when they see meaningful value.

To examine how the season is shaping up and what retailers can expect through Black Friday and Cyber Week, Retail Insider spoke with Caila Schwartz, Director, Consumer Strategy and Insights for Salesforce. A follow-up article will provide an update in December once the full Cyber Week results for Canada are available.

Early online sales climb as discounts start ahead of schedule

According to Salesforce data, the timing of Black Friday is a key factor this year.

“Similar to last year, it is a late Black Friday,” said Schwartz. “With it being later, we have seen a lot of effort on behalf of the industry to pull sales earlier, especially in Canada.”

Salesforce’s Holiday Hub data shows that since the start of October, online sales in Canada are up 2 percent year over year. The first two weeks of November have been notably strong.

“When we look at the beginning of November, week one and week two, we are seeing really strong double-digit growth,” she said. “The first week grew 13 percent year over year. The second week grew 12 percent year over year. So, which is huge growth.”

Discount levels are already elevated. Schwartz noted that in the second week of November the average discount rate reached 28 percent, which is only about one percentage point lower than Salesforce had anticipated for Black Friday.

“The deals are starting early,” she said. “Consumers in this market have really been waiting for deals. They have been focusing on essentials and cutting back, and now that the deals are starting, they are starting to buy.”

Shoppers buy more items per order as pressure shifts from price to volume

Early signs suggest that Canada holiday shopping trends this year are being driven less by higher prices and more by unit volume. Schwartz said Salesforce is seeing a shift in how shoppers build their baskets.

“Average selling prices are remaining steady, so Canadian consumers are not spending more for the products they were buying last year,” she explained. “Units per transaction are increasing over last year. We saw a 2 percent increase in the rate of items purchased per order.”

Salesforce is also tracking a rise in order volumes. That combination implies that growth is coming from shoppers buying more items, not from retailers pushing through higher ticket prices.

“A lot of the growth we are seeing right now is really coming from consumers buying more,” said Schwartz. “They are getting some relief on those macroeconomic factors that they have been dealing with for the last several years.”

Cyber Week remains the focal point for deal-sensitive Canadians

Although early November has been strong, Canadian shoppers remain cautious and are still highly focused on promotional peaks. Schwartz said consumers increasingly recognize that Cyber Week is the period when the deepest discounts are likely to appear.

“They are definitely sales sensitive, but similar to their U.S. and global counterparts, they understand that the best deals they are going to get will be during the holiday season, especially Cyber Week,” she said. “Consumers are telling us that Cyber Week has the best discounts and that they are holding onto spend in anticipation of those deals.”

That pattern also influenced the performance of Amazon’s October Prime event and similar sales.

“What we saw over Prime was not as much engagement this year over the October Prime event in Canada, similar to the U.S.,” she said. “Because it is in such close proximity to Cyber Week and Black Friday, consumers are taking a wait-and-see approach. They know it might go on sale, and if they wait, it might be a better discount.”

Last year, Salesforce observed that digital sales in Canada were highly concentrated in the period immediately surrounding Cyber Week.

“Sales really came in fast the week before Cyber Week, Cyber Week, and then the week after Cyber Week,” said Schwartz. “After that, the last two and a half weeks or so, it really fell off. We did not see much activity on digital channels for shopping. Given it is such a similar season in length, I anticipate that the activity we are seeing right now and through the next week and a half will be indicative of consumer demand, and we will probably see it fall off towards the latter half of the season.”

For Cyber Week itself, Salesforce expects online sales in Canada to reach approximately $3.72 billion.

Retailers balance margin with sharper discounting than last year

For retailers, the challenge is to manage margin while meeting consumer expectations for value. Schwartz said the sector has been juggling rising costs, inflation and uneven sentiment since 2022, and this season is no exception.

“Managing margin is something that we have seen the industry really try to juggle,” she said. “Rising costs, inflation, consumer sentiment have all been something that the industry has tried to balance.”

Last year, some retailers were hesitant to offer deep discounts during Cyber Week and instead adjusted after seeing softer-than-expected demand.

“Retailers came back after Cyber Week with even better deals than during Cyber Week,” she said. “They did not see the level of demand they had anticipated, so they came back post Cyber Week with even better deals trying to pull shoppers in.”

“This year we are not seeing that. We are seeing retailers really lean in, go very early on very strong deals, putting their best foot forward.”

AI tools reshape both shopper journeys and retail operations

Another key element influencing Canada holiday shopping trends is the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence across the sector. Schwartz said retailers are using agentic tools in both customer-facing and back-end functions, with the aim of improving efficiency and protecting margins.

“Retail is one of the fastest adopters of agents, not only on the front end but within the business,” she said. “They have to do more with less, and this is a technology that is really helping them.”

On the employee side, retailers are deploying agents in merchandising, customer service and marketing.

“We are seeing retailers lean into merchandising agents and agents within customer service, freeing up customer service agents and delivering better experiences,” she said. “Within marketing, they are building more personalized campaigns and creating campaign briefs. There is a lot of innovation going on there.”

On the consumer side, Schwartz said the past 12 months have transformed how shoppers discover brands and products. AI search tools are now directing a growing share of traffic to Canadian e-commerce sites.

“In Canada, we have seen an 816 percent increase in the rate of traffic year over year since October 1 for these third-party AI tools driving traffic to Canadian e-commerce websites,” she said. “Consumers are leaning into these tools.”

At the same time, many retailers are launching their own shopper agents on their websites to support conversational shopping once customers arrive from an AI search.

“We did a comparison of brands using shopper agents versus those not,” said Schwartz. “Since the start of the season, those particular brands using shopper agents grew about seven times faster than their counterparts not leveraging this technology yet.”

Salesforce has also announced an integration that will allow retailers to connect their product catalogues directly to ChatGPT.

“Retailers will be able to integrate their product catalog directly, so when a user searches for a specific product or use case, the model will be able to pull in details of that product catalog,” she said. “Ideally we will be able to surface inventory, pricing, availability and local availability, which helps drive discoverability more efficiently.”

Luxury, beauty and electronics lead category growth in Canada

While overall Canada holiday shopping trends point to growth around key promotional moments, Salesforce is already seeing standout categories in the Canadian market.

“Luxury is growing the fastest at the moment, 9 percent year over year,” said Schwartz. “Health and beauty is also a strong performer in Canada. And surprisingly, electronics are doing very well right now. We are not seeing that in the U.S. or in Europe.”

She linked the luxury performance to financial markets, interest rate moves and the behaviour of higher income shoppers.

“The stock market generally is very strong right now,” she said. “Higher income consumers often benchmark their sense of stability against financial markets. With interest rates lowering and the stock market being strong, these consumers have a new sense of financial stability.”

Luxury buyers are also placing more items in their baskets.

“In Canada, we are seeing units per transaction increase at 3 percent year over year,” she said. “Average selling price is only up 2 percent, and average order value is growing more. We are also seeing a 4 percent increase in order volumes. That means this consumer is genuinely purchasing more at checkout and placing more orders.”

In beauty, Salesforce data indicates that growth is occurring at both the high and low ends of the market.

“We are seeing growth in beauty at the high end and the low end, and the middle is where there is softness,” she said. “People are either staying at the high end or moving down into that lower end in beauty.”

Electronics, which struggled globally over the last couple of years, appears to be benefiting from both discounting and product lifecycles.

“It has been a category that has struggled on a global scale,” said Schwartz. “Technology lifecycle plays a role. Eventually, you cannot put off upgrading your computer or phone, so knowing that we are heading into a discounting period, consumers are saying, ‘OK, I will finally upgrade.’”

Strong start sets up competitive Cyber Week and busy luxury channels

With strong early-season growth, deep promotions and new digital tools in place, Salesforce expects Cyber Week to be highly competitive in Canada.

“We are seeing really strong growth so far,” said Schwartz. “The growth is going to be centered around those key moments. Early season now, next week and Cyber Week.”

Salesforce will continue updating its Holiday Hub with Canadian data on a daily basis through Cyber Week, including performance by category, discount rates and traffic patterns. Retail Insider plans to revisit these findings in December, once more complete data is available on how the Canadian holiday season played out across Black Friday, Cyber Week and the final shopping days before Christmas.

More from Retail Insider:

• Black Friday set to surge as Canadians shop smarter for 2025: RCC
• Canadians to spend $9.3B this Black Friday and Cyber Monday