Not all is bad in the retail world especially if your primary business is online. comScore’s latest survey results show Cyber Monday, the online equivalent to Black Friday, up 15% over last year making it the second busiest online shopping day on record. The weekend between Thanksgiving day and Cyber Monday (Nov. 29 - 30th) was up 19% over 2007.
| Holiday Season to Date |
Millions ($) |
| |
2007 |
2008 |
Percent Change |
| Nov. 1 - Dec. 1 |
$12,217 |
12,025 |
-2% |
| Pre-Thanksgiving |
$10,035 |
$9,588 |
-4% |
| Thanksgiving and Later |
$2,182 |
$2,437 |
12% |
| November 27 (Thanksgiving Day) |
$272 |
$288 |
6% |
| November 28 ("Black Friday") |
$531 |
$534 |
1% |
| November 29-30 (Weekend) |
$645 |
$769 |
19% |
| December 1 ("Cyber Monday") |
$733 |
$846 |
15% |
| |
|
|
|
comScore’s chairman Gian Fulgoni is quoted as saying:
Rumors of the death of online holiday shopping have been greatly exaggerated
and continued with:
With Cyber Monday promotions beginning in earnest over the Thanksgiving weekend, consumers have finally begun to open their wallets, setting off a streak of four consecutive days of extremely strong growth, and culminating in a Cyber Monday that racked up an impressive $846 million in online spending
Some of the other findings from ComScore:
- More than half (51 percent) of consumers indicated that the level of promotions and discounts is higher this year than last year, while only 12 percent said that there appeared to be fewer, suggesting that retailers are having to be more aggressive in discounting to spur consumer spending.
- 39 percent of consumers said that there seemed to be fewer people out shopping in retail stores this year than last year, while only 7 percent thought there were more.