Shoppers Used AI to Research High-Stakes Purchases Throughout the BFCM Weekend, with Saturday Surpassing Black Friday as the Biggest Day for Questions

NEW YORK, Dec. 3, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Bluecore, the retail technology company that empowers retailers to discover their best customers and keep them for life, today released its 2025 Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) shopping data, revealing that Black Friday drove the highest shopper intent, but Saturday saw the most questions asked through its AI shopping agent, alby, suggesting that shoppers did more research and comparison shopping on Saturday.

The analysis examined data from 1 million alby conversations, 27 million customer e-commerce interactions, 1.95 billion shopper events, 3.7 million orders, and $531 million in total sales across 144 retail brands, found that freeform questions climbed 57% from the mid-week baseline, highlighting that AI-assisted shopping is now core to decision-making during peak retail moments.

“The numbers don’t lie, as this Black Friday proved that AI has become the new sales floor expert,” said Fayez Mohamood, CEO of Bluecore. “Shoppers aren’t just browsing websites anymore; they’re actively researching products and asking detailed questions about everything from assembly requirements to waterproof ratings. Shoppers are no longer willing to buy blind, and are requiring AI-powered confidence at their fingertips before they purchase.”

Key findings from Bluecore and its AI shopping agent alby’s 2025 Black Friday and Cyber Monday data include:

Black Friday Drove a 50% Surge in AI-Powered Shopping Assistance
- Black Friday saw a 50% surge in shopper engagement with AI shopping assistance compared to mid-week baseline, with question widget views jumping from approximately 1.6M (Mon-Thurs average) to 2.4M on Black Friday, and freeform messages rising 57% from baseline to 32.6k.
Shoppers Used AI to Decode High-Stakes Purchase Decisions Across Categories
- During BFCM, shoppers turned to AI assistance to answer critical pre-purchase questions: furniture buyers asked about assembly requirements and weight capacity, sporting goods customers verified skill level matching (“What skill level is this ski for?”), and parents validated safety certifications (“Is this seat FAA approved?”) before buying.
Saturday Became the Biggest Research Day Despite Black Friday’s Sales Dominance
- Saturday (11/29) recorded the highest number of questions asked at 278,911 daily questions, surpassing even Black Friday’s 254,781 questions, suggesting shoppers did more research and comparison shopping on Saturday despite taking more decisive purchasing actions on Friday.
BFCM Weekend Shopping Engagement Remained Consistently High, Not Just a One-Day Event
- Shopping engagement held steady throughout the entire weekend with nearly identical numbers on Black Friday and Saturday (both 2.4M), demonstrating that BFCM is no longer a one-day-centric event, with shoppers actively browsing and researching throughout the entire three-day weekend.
Sports and Hobbies Category Saw Highest Average Order Value Surge at Nearly 60%
- Sports and hobbies retailers delivered standout commercial performance with AOV soaring 75.41% year over year during Black Friday, the highest increase of any category – reflecting passionate, high-intent audiences making purposeful purchases during the shopping event.

Bluecore’s advanced, AI-driven platform empowers retailers to create completely personalized communications at scale by curating online shopping experiences to each shopper’s individual and nuanced interaction with their brand, predicting their next steps. The company incorporates a deep understanding of shoppers’ ever-shifting behaviors with a comprehensive view of retailers’ live product catalogs for an integrated approach that delivers precision messages to shoppers when they are most likely to buy, no matter where they are.

You can learn more about Bluecore’s full platform at bluecore.com.

Methodology
Bluecore analyzed the following data from BFCM 2025, collected from 22.5 million first-party cookies, 1.95 billion shopper events, 3.7 million orders, and $531 million in total sales across 144 retail brands. Of these 144 brands, 59 are classified as enterprise (those with at least 250,000 unique customers on Black Friday), while the remaining 85 are considered mid-market.

All source data is from conversations between customers and alby’s AI shopping agent, gathered between during the BFCM timeframes noted above. The dataset includes more than 1M questions asked across more than 1.27M customer e-commerce interactions in November 2025.

About Bluecore and alby
Bluecore’s suite of retail marketing technology creates personalized shopping experiences across all consumer-facing digital channels—transforming anonymous shoppers into known customers along the way.

With its AI shopping agent alby, Bluecore is enabling retailers—from enterprise to SMB—to predict and answer shoppers’ questions, significantly increasing their likelihood of purchase. alby integrates directly into retailers’ product catalogs, anticipates their intent and progresses them through the buying journey. It simultaneously equips retailers with an entirely new dataset: the questions shoppers ask right before they buy. This data fuels their ability to personalize future interactions across every channel. Through alby, Bluecore is preparing retailers for the agentic future of commerce, where both AI agents and humans shop together.

More than 400 leading retailers, including Wayfair, Tapestry, Express, Lenovo and Alo Yoga, and a growing number of Shopify brands trust Bluecore to accelerate profitable growth. Learn more at Bluecore.

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