black monday sales

Online retail spending is up substantially from last year, perhaps allowing e-tailers a sigh of relief.

An updated shopping estimate from comScore on Sunday estimated that online sales on both Thanksgiving Day and "Black Friday" were up by over 20 percent: online sales increased by 29 percent to $272 million on Thanksgiving alone, while $531 million was spent the next day, up 22 percent from last year.

In total, online sales from Nov. 1 through Nov. 23 grew 17 percent to $9.36 billion, comScore said.

Meanwhile, sales on "Cyber Monday" today are expected to top $700 million, a new record. Even stronger sales are expected in the days ahead, the analyst firm said. Historically, the strongest week for online sales is the week of Dec. 9.

Hurry to see our best-of list of "Cyber Monday" shopping sites before the deals disappear!

"Online retailers will also certainly be paying close attention to what happens on Cyber Monday, which will provide an even clearer indication of what lies ahead for the rest of the season," said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni, in a statement. "Based on the growth rates we've seen so far this season and historical consumer behavior patterns, we would expect Cyber Monday sales be even stronger than Black Friday's and to exceed $700 million. While this would make it the heaviest online shopping day on record, we can expect to see even stronger days ahead as the 2007 shopping season progresses into December."

Some had worried that the holiday shopping season would see sales drop off, as the plunging dollar, subprime equity crunch, and sharp rise in gas prices all had negative effects. According to comScore, it hasn't happened.

The hottest category continues to be video games, consoles and accessories, which is up 134 percent versus the corresponding days last year. Consumer electronics sales are also up 21 percent, just behind furniture, appliances, and equipment, whose sales have grown 36 percent compared to last year, comScore said.
This is Cyber Monday, a red-letter day for the online holiday shopping season, and one survey estimates that 72 million consumers plan to shop online from home or at work today.

That number would be up from 60.7 million last year and 59 million in 2005, said the author of the survey, Shop.org, a division of the National Retail Federation, a trade group of retailers.

In those benighted days of yesteryear - a.k.a. 1999 - most consumers had a slow, dial-up modems for accessing the Internet from home, and so the theory was that after several days of window-shopping at the malls over Thanksgiving weekend, they would show up at work on Monday and use the boss's high-speed Internet connections to do some online shopping.

Even though many consumers now have high-speed Internet connections at home, the traditiion of Cyber Monday remains, in part because many online retailers key their promotions to the day.

"Retailers will be unveiling a variety of incredible one-day sales on Cyber Monday to bring consumers to their websites," Scott Silverman, executive director of Shop.org, said in a statement.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)

black monday sales