Amazon's "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" preheating has begun, and online shopping scale is expected to reach new highs?

According to Zhitong Finance APP, Amazon (AMZN.US), the American e-commerce and cloud service giant, has announced details regarding its shopping events during "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday," two major online shopping days in Western countries. Amazon expects these large-scale shopping transactions to take place during the busy extended holiday shopping period from November 21 to December 2. During last year's Black Friday to Cyber Monday shopping spree, global consumers recorded the largest volume of online purchases on Amazon's e-commerce platform to date.

The e-commerce giant pointed out that its long-term customer base may achieve millions of transactions across more than 35 categories, including electronics, home goods, beauty, and fashion, featuring popular products from brands like Sonos, Staub, and Supergoop!, as well as the latest denim products from Levi's.

Amazon customers can also choose to purchase some of the hottest toy products of the current shopping season at any time, including flagship products from popular toy brands like Squishmallows, Furby, and Tonies. The Amazon e-commerce platform also plans to offer some of the year's cheapest must-have items, such as matching pajamas and holiday classic outfits starting at just $6, along with rare discounts of up to 40% on Amazon Essentials jackets.

In addition to the online shopping frenzy, Amazon will also become the focus of the global sports community on Black Friday, as Amazon's Prime Video will broadcast the highly anticipated American football game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Las Vegas Raiders.

Last year, Amazon's e-commerce platform officially announced that the 11-day global online shopping frenzy from November 17 to November 27 was the largest scale Amazon platform has seen to date, compared to similar "Black Friday" to "Cyber Monday" shopping periods in previous years. During the 11-day online shopping event, Amazon's statistics showed that global online customers purchased over 1 billion items on the Amazon shopping platform. Furthermore, among the 1 billion items ordered between last year's Black Friday and Cyber Monday, over 500 million came from independent seller stores on the Amazon marketplace, mostly from small and medium-sized enterprises worldwide.

This year's "Black Friday" shopping day is on November 29, and the much-anticipated "Cyber Monday" discount holiday for Western consumers is on December 2, marking the latest dates these two shopping frenzies have appeared on the calendar in many years.

Ahead of this year's Black Friday to Cyber Monday shopping festival, consumer spending data indicates that spending levels among consumers in Europe and the United States remain very strong. In September, U.S. retail sales increased by 0.4% month-on-month, unexpectedly exceeding economists' expectations of 0.3%, driven by broad consumer growth, indicating that even under the long-term pressure of high interest rates, U.S. consumer spending remains resilient, continuing to provide strong momentum for the U.S. economy. After a 0.1% month-on-month increase in August, U.S. retail sales saw an unexpected month-on-month increase of 0.4% in September One of Amazon's biggest competitors, Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify (SHOP.US), reported its latest financial results that exceeded Wall Street expectations. The company's financial report showed that total revenue in the third quarter grew by approximately 26% to $2.16 billion, surpassing the average analyst expectation of $2.12 billion. This marks the sixth consecutive quarter that this e-commerce company has seen revenue growth exceeding 25% (excluding logistics).

More importantly, in the third quarter, Shopify's gross merchandise volume (GMV) reached $69.7 billion, a year-on-year increase of 24%, exceeding the general analyst expectation of $67.8 billion, indicating that online shopping spending by consumers in Europe and the United States remains very strong. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, Shopify's management forecasts total revenue growth of 25%-29%, while analysts generally expect around 23%