December 3rd, 2008
Cyber Monday spending jumps 15 percent. What happened to bah humbug economy?
Maybe there’s some hope for the holiday season after all.
Spending on Cyber Monday - the Black Friday of online shopping - jumped 15 percent from the year before, with online shoppers dropping a cool $846 million in a single day, according to comScore. In fact, spending was up throughout the entire Thanksgiving holiday weekend, starting with a 6 percent jump on Thanksgiving Day, 1 percent increase on Black Friday and a 19 percent spike for two-day weekend.
For the last few years, Cyber Monday performance has been used as a indicator for the full season year-over-year growth of online sales. If history repeats itself, spending will be up 15 percent or so for the whole season. Then again, Monday was also the day the U.S. government officially said the “R” word - recession.
Previous coverage:
Cyber Monday traffic better than last year
Netbooks dominate Cyber Monday sales
Does Cyber Monday matter this year?
comScore also noted that more than half of consumers - 51 percent - said they found promotions and discounts to be higher this year, compared to last year. Only 12 percent said there appeared to be fewer deals. Meanwhile, 39 percent of consumers said that foot traffic in retail stores seemed to be lighter this year, while only 7 percent thought it was heavier.
Sam Diaz is a senior editor at ZDNet. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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