By Uday Sampath Kumar

(Reuters) – U.S. retailers will generate cyber Monday sales in excess of $11.3 billion, a decrease in growth from a previous year due to fewer discounts.

In order to preserve profit margins and manage inventory during the severe shortages of products ahead of Christmas, retail stores had extended promotional deals over more weeks.

These efforts have stifled sales of what is traditionally one of the largest shopping days of each year. Adobe (NASDAQ.) Analytics data showed over the weekend that Black Friday online spending dropped for the first-ever time in history, which reverses the recent increase.

Cyber Monday in America, which was popularized in mid 2000s by online retailers as a way to capitalize on consumer spending spike around Thanksgiving, will be worth between $10.2 and $11.3 billion according to Adobe’s early estimates. 

This translates into roughly equal growth to the midpoint last year at $10.8 billion. It is a nearly 15% increase from 2019.

Rob Garf (NYSE: General Manager of Retail at Salesforce), stated that “We have seen the lowest holiday discounts rates in recent history.” He also said that the average discount rate in the United States for the week prior to Cyber Monday was 8% less than last year.

There won’t be any more Christmas presents this year. Garf reported that the U.S. has experienced flat November order growth and that Americans are buying 1% less per transaction.

Holiday season sales begin when Omicron Coronavirus has created uncertainty regarding the economy’s recovery. [.N]

Senior Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:) executives stated that it is too soon to know how this variant will affect consumer spending, but they suggested that consumers will continue shopping for the time being.