As Cyber Weekend winds down, Adobe Analytics projects Cyber Monday e-commerce sales could top $12 billion, driven by promotions and discounts. Accenture's Global Retail Lead Jill Standish, says this holiday season had a slower start, with shopping momentum building on Black Friday itself.

However, Standish notes that retailers are on a "profit watch" given the headwinds consumers are facing. Retailers also face inventory and staffing challenges, despite what she calls the "golden quarter" now underway. Yet, Standish points to consumers prioritizing family time. She believes businesses that provide meals, gatherings, and family bonding experiences may see an uptick this holiday season.

"If you think about it a couple years ago we weren't able to do that," Standish tells Yahoo Finance when asked about the rising consumer spend on experiences, adding "so this year we're saying it's going to be a real human holiday."

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Video Transcript

- What are you expecting for this holiday shopping season, Jill? Same as last year? Stronger or weaker? What do you think?

JILL STANDISH: Well, I think we're all watching the numbers really strongly, aren't we? And the reason is because this season actually started later than in previous years. A lot of our research showed that people weren't going to start shopping until after Thanksgiving. And sure that happened on Black Friday. Any prediction, I'd say anywhere between 2%, 3%, 4% up from last year for all of holiday.

We're seeing those numbers. Let's see what happens today though because it is Cyber Monday.

- Well, and also Jill, what struck me about the holiday prediction survey you put out, I guess, it was in advance of this, was that people are planning to cut back in a lot of different ways. They're planning to cut back on non-essentials. They're planning to cut back on gifts for extended family and friends because of budget constraints. When do we find out if they've actually done that? Because as we know, what people say they're going to do and what they actually do doesn't always match up.

JILL STANDISH: Yeah. The old say do gap, of course. Well, listen, this is the golden quarter, I like to call it. I don't know if you know what Black Friday really means. It's actually when a lot of companies turn from being in the red to being in the black in terms of profit. So I mean, we did see this coming. We did see, especially from changes in from last year to this year that people said-- only 26% said they were going to start early. So that's really low.