Discount Depth by Ecommerce Product Category
Last updated September 20, 2026
A sourced reference of real peak promotional discount depth, the percentage taken off list price, across 8 ecommerce product categories during Black Friday/Cyber Week 2025, with a year-over-year comparison. Every figure below traces to Adobe Analytics' official holiday shopping report.
This is a companion to discount impact on margin by category, but it measures a different thing: how deep the discount actually goes, not what that discount costs a specific company's gross margin. Read together, one tells you what “typical” looks like, the other tells you what it costs.
Methodology
Figures are peak discount percentages off list price during the Black Friday/Cyber Week 2025 window, as reported by Adobe Analytics across billions of dollars in tracked U.S. online transactions. Unlike our other category research pages, which draw on individual public companies' SEC filings, this page uses a single industry-wide analytics source, since no small set of companies discloses discount depth as a clean, comparable percentage the way they disclose gross margin or inventory metrics.
Peak Discount Depth by Category
Percentage off list price at peak, Black Friday/Cyber Week 2025 vs. 2024.
| Category | 2025 Peak Discount | 2024 Peak Discount | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electronics | 30.9% | 30.1% | +0.8 pts |
| Toys | 29.6% | 28.0% | +1.6 pts |
| Apparel | 25.1% | 23.2% | +1.9 pts |
| Televisions | 24.3% | 24.2% | +0.1 pts |
| Computers | 23.4% | 22.8% | +0.6 pts |
| Sporting Goods | 20.3% | 19.5% | +0.8 pts |
| Appliances | 20.2% | 19.2% | +1.0 pts |
| Furniture | 18.8% | 19.0% | -0.2 pts |
Furniture: The one category that discounted slightly less deeply than the prior year.
Adobe Holiday Shopping Season 2025 Report, Adobe Analytics / Adobe Digital Price IndexLimitations
These are peak, headline discount figures from the single deepest promotional window of the year, Black Friday/Cyber Week, not a year-round baseline discount rate. A store running discounts more conservatively or more frequently outside the holiday window would see very different numbers. The data also reflects an aggregate across many retailers of very different sizes and margin structures, a small independent store's sustainable discount depth depends on its own margin, not just what the category average did during the single most competitive shopping window of the year.
What This Means for Your Own Store
These figures are a useful sanity check, not a target to match. If your category's peak discount depth is 25-30%, that tells you what shoppers expect to see during a major sale, but whether your own margin can actually absorb that depth is a separate question entirely. Our guide to pricing a discount without losing your margin covers how to size a discount against your own cost structure, and which products actually deserve a discount covers picking the right candidates before you decide how deep to go. Zorin reads your own sales history to tell you how a specific product responds to a price move, instead of borrowing an industry average that may not fit your catalog at all.
See what discount depth your own products can actually support.
Start free trialFrequently Asked Questions
What's a typical discount depth by product category?
Based on Adobe Analytics' peak Black Friday/Cyber Week 2025 data, discount depth ranged from 18.8% (furniture) to 30.9% (electronics) off list price. Electronics, toys, and apparel discounted deepest; furniture and appliances discounted the least.
Which categories discount the most?
Electronics (30.9%), toys (29.6%), and apparel (25.1%) showed the deepest peak discounts during the 2025 holiday shopping season, per Adobe Analytics.
Which categories discount the least?
Furniture (18.8%) and appliances (20.2%) showed the shallowest peak discounts in the 2025 data. Furniture was also the only category in this dataset to discount slightly less deeply than the prior year (18.8% vs 19.0% in 2024).
Is this the same as the discount impact on margin research?
No, they measure different things. This page measures discount depth, the percentage taken off the list price during peak promotional periods, sourced from Adobe's industry-wide analytics. The companion discount impact on margin page measures the actual basis-point hit to a specific public company's gross margin from that discounting, sourced from individual SEC filings.
Does discount depth typically increase or decrease year over year?
In the 2025 data, 7 of 8 categories discounted more deeply than in 2024, with electronics essentially flat and toys and apparel increasing the most (toys up 1.6 points, apparel up 1.9 points). Furniture was the only category to discount less deeply than the prior year.
How to Cite This Page
Zorin. “Discount Depth by Ecommerce Product Category.” Updated September 20, 2026. https://www.tryzorin.com/research/discount-depth-by-product-category