Adobe: Online prices fall year-over-year for 26th straight month
The latest Adobe Digital Price Index indicates that online prices continued going in the right direction on an annual basis in October even as they inched up from September.
According to new inflation data from the Adobe Digital Price Index, based on Adobe Analytics, In October 2024, online prices fell 2.9% year-over-year while rising 0.1% month-over-month. This marks 26 consecutive months where online prices have fallen on an annual basis.
Adobe data indicates that October’s year-over-year price decrease was driven by notable drops in major discretionary categories such as apparel and toys, as well as in the grocery category where online prices fell following a prolonged period of inflation.
Across the 18 categories tracked by Adobe, 12 saw year-over-year price decreases in October. In the grocery category, prices fell 0.1% both year-over-year and month-over-month, marking the first year-over-year price drop since January 2020 when prices had fallen 0.6%.
More recently, grocery prices online were up 0.5% year-over-year in August 2024 and flat in September 2024, before dipping in the latest October 2024 data. Adobe says consumers are increasingly buying more of their groceries online, and this category has generally moved in tandem with the Consumer Price Index.
Other categories where prices fell year-over-year include apparel (down 9.9% year-over-year, down 2.5% month-over-month), toys (down 4.4% year-over-year, flat month-over-month), computers (down 3.8% year-over-year, up 2.9% month-over-month), furniture/bedding (down 2.9% year-over-year, up 0.8% month-over-month) and appliances (down 2.7% year-over-year, up 0.9% month-over-month).
In the electronics category, however, prices were up 0.3% year-over-year (up 1.5% month-over-month). This marks the first year-over-year price increase for the category since Adobe began tracking online prices in 2014. In the months prior, electronic prices online had fallen 4% year-over-year in September and 5.3% year-over-year in August.
"Consumers continue to see good bargains online and are taking advantage of them, driving $82 billion in e-commerce spend for October 2024, which represents 6.7% growth from the year prior," said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst, Adobe Digital Insights. "Early holiday promotions including the industrywide Prime Day event contributed to the healthy demand in October, but we expect many consumers are holding out for the bigger discounts to come during Cyber Week."
[READ MORE: Adobe: U.S. online holiday spend to shatter records at $240.8 billion]
Other notable categories in the Adobe DPI for October 2024
- Toys: Prices were down 4.4% year-over-year (flat month-over-month), after falling 6.2% year-over-year in the month prior (September). Online prices for toys have now fallen year-over-year for 43 consecutive months, beginning in April 2021 when prices fell 2.3% year-over-year.
- Apparel: Prices were down 9.9% year-over-year (down 2.5% month-over-month), falling faster than pre-pandemic levels when apparel prices fell 1.1% year-over-year on average between 2015 and 2019. Apparel prices online have now fallen for 14 consecutive months, one of the longest spans of year-over-year price decreases since Adobe began tracking online prices in 2014.
Year-over-year price increases occurred in six categories including electronics, personal care, office supplies, jewelry, non-prescription drugs and medical equipment/supplies. Year-over-year price drops were observed in 12 categories including books, furniture/bedding, toys, home/garden, pet products, grocery, tools/home improvement, appliances, flowers/related gifts, computers, sporting goods and apparel.
Ten of the 18 categories in the DPI saw month-over-month price increases including electronics, personal care, office supplies, furniture/bedding, home/garden, non-prescription drugs, tools/home improvement, appliances, computers and sporting goods. Month-over-month price drops were observed across 8 categories including jewelry, books, toys, pet products, grocery, flowers/related gifts, medical equipment/supplies and apparel.
The DPI is modeled after the Consumer Price Index (CPI), published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and uses the Fisher Price Index to track online prices. Adobe’s analysis is weighted by the real quantities of the products purchased in the two adjacent months. Adobe uses a combination of its artificial intelligence and machine learning framework and manual effort to segment products into the categories defined by the CPI manual.
