Cyber Monday Sales Top $1Billion! Sign Of Economic Recovery

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Manic Cyber Monday Top $1B In Sales



Cyber Monday started as a gimmick to get people to shop at their desks on the first workday after Thanksgiving. But if you promote something enough, it can take on a life of its own.

This year, stores swamped customers with online ads and e-mail deals, and sales could top $1 billion, making it bigger than any single shopping day last year.

Online sales were already running 15 percent ahead of last year's by 3 p.m. Monday, with the biggest shopping hours of the day still to come, according to IBM's Coremetrics tracking service.

"The numbers are really strong," said the service's chief strategy officer, John Squire, who added that he expects Cyber Monday to be the biggest online shopping day of the season.

The Monday after Thanksgiving was dubbed Cyber Monday by the National Retail Federation trade group in 2005 to describe the unofficial kickoff to the online shopping season. The idea was that people returning to work after the long weekend would shop at their desks.

It never really was the busiest online shopping day of the year.

But like any good marketing angle, it spawned imitation. Nearly 90 percent of U.S. retailers offered some kind of Cyber Monday promotion this year, targeting shoppers who didn't want to venture out at 4 a.m. for those in-store deals. In 2007, 72 percent offered a Cyber Monday promotion.

"Retailers are doing everything they can to build up and extend the event aspect of it — tweeting deals every hour, running Cyber Monday ads — like it's such a big thing you can't miss out on," said Stacy Landreth Grau, associate professor of marketing at Texas Christian University's Neeley School of Business.

Rachel Bergman, general manager of e-mail marketing service Experian CheetahMail, said this year the company sent out several hundred million Cyber Monday promotional e-mails, 40 percent more than last year — on behalf of clients like Borders, J. Jill and Bass Pro Shops.

It has rarely been the biggest online shopping day of the holiday season, however — last year it was No. 2 — and this year, online deals have been stretched by retailers throughout the weekend.

Historically the biggest online shopping day of the year comes sometime in mid-December, when shoppers face deadlines for ordering to ensure delivery by Christmas Eve. Last year, it was Dec. 15, according to online research firm ComScore.

But this year, shoppers seem to be in the mood to spend more. On Thanksgiving Day, usually quiet for online shopping, Americans spent $407 million online, 28 percent more than last year. They spent nearly $650 million online the following day, up 9 percent.

Last year, Cyber Monday sales totaled $887 million. This year, $1 billion wouldn't be a surprise, analysts say.

New Yorker Joseph Gallo waited until Cyber Monday to buy the Blu-ray "Back to the Future" trilogy, on sale for $34.99, and separately a pair of headphones slashed to $45.69 from $130 from Amazon.com.

"I get the feeling of deals being better having watched Amazon all last week and today," Gallo said.

Many shoppers don't actually buy at work. They compare prices from their desks, then buy when they get home, said Graham Jones, vice president of merchant accounts for deal aggregator Pricegrabber.com. Peak activity on that site is usually 7 or 8 p.m.

Retailers like Best Buy, Target and others have extended their online deals through much of the weekend and through the week, but they were offering specific deals on Monday.

Target offered a Kodak Waterproof mini video camera, regularly $99.99, for $49.99, and it will offer more deals Tuesday and throughout the week. Walmart.com, which is pushing the event as "Cyber Week," promoted bikes for $39 and a 6.5-quart Dutch oven for $33.

Some shoppers who bypassed discounts over the weekend were rewarded on Monday. At Landsend.com, a girl's jacket was on sale for $39.99 on Sunday, a third off the retail price of $59.50. By Monday morning, the price was $35, and an extra savings came by way of free shipping.

Christy McClung, a student and quality control worker in central Oregon, said she bought a TV at BestBuy.com after she was out of town and missed Black Friday sales.

While she didn't find exactly the TV she wanted, she bought one because it was a good value, she said. "With the free shipping, it was a great deal."

Cyber Monday's share of online holiday spending has grown slightly over the past five years, from 2.5 percent in 2005 to 3 percent last year. That's partly because of shifts in the calendar that make the holiday shopping season longer or shorter, but also because "as consumers become more attuned to deals and discounts, Cyber Monday has become a more important event," said Andrew Lipsman, an analyst for ComScore.

Online spending is still a relatively small piece of the holiday pie, between 8 and 10 percent of total holiday sales.


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Sources: CNBC, MSNBC, The Shoe Dish, Google Maps

"Cyber Monday" Sales Top 2008 By 20%...Winners & Losers

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"Cyber Monday" sales rise 20 percent over 2008


Retail Web sites kept amping up the deals Monday, the first day after Thanksgiving weekend's strong online sales, to try to maintain the momentum.

Meanwhile, a research firm that tracks business at stores reported tepid sales and customer traffic for Friday and Saturday that confirmed a so-so start to the season for the bricks-and-mortar world.

Though the Web is only about 10 percent of the holiday shopping pie, it's seen most of the growth so far this year — an encouraging sign after last year's first online sales decline.

Coremetrics, a Web analytics company in San Mateo, Calif., said that as of 1 p.m. Monday, sales for the day that the industry still pitches as "Cyber Monday" were up 19.6 percent over a year ago.

The bright spot offers hope after traditional retail sales came in just above flat for Black Friday, with shoppers packing stores but sticking to their lists, going for deep discounts and practical items.

Investors voted with their dollars, rewarding online sellers. Amazon.com shares rose $4.17, or 3.2 percent, to $135.91 on a day when stocks of most traditional retailers fell as Wall Street analyzed the sea of data and anecdotal reports from the weekend.

ShopperTrak, which is based in Chicago and tracks sales and traffic at more than 50,000 outlets, said late Monday that retail sales for Friday and Saturday edged up 0.9 percent to $16.77 billion, while customer traffic fell 2.7 percent compared with last year. According to ShopperTrak, U.S. traffic slipped 2.5 percent on Friday, compared with an 18 percent drop in the year-ago period. Traffic fell 3.2 percent Saturday, compared with a 17 percent drop a year ago.

ShopperTrak derives its data from crowd-counting sensors in stores, combined with data from the retailers themselves on spending and how it relates to customer traffic.

Practical items popular with shoppers

Deeply discounted electronics such as flat-screen TVs, game systems and netbooks were popular, but more practical items such as appliances and home decor were also big sellers, as consumers took advantage of sales to buy things for themselves.

Many shoppers started looking for online deals ahead of what the industry still pitches as "Cyber Monday," as retailers stretched their online deals over several days.

Target, Walmart, Amazon.com and other retailers started offering the online equivalent of Black Friday specials on Thanksgiving or even earlier.

They stepped it up Monday. Amazon.com was discounting the Apple iPod Touch 8GB for $158, $20 less than Sunday and $40 off the retail price of about $200. Target.com offered a deal Monday for a Garmin GPS system for $186.99, down from $249.99. Free shipping was also prevalent.


New Thanksgiving tradition: Shopping?

Marshall Cohen, chief industry analyst at market research firm NPD Group, said this year saw the "graying of Black Friday," because deals that typically occurred only on the Friday after Thanksgiving have been spread out over two weeks.

"The holiday spread itself out," he said. "On Thanksgiving Day, there's a new tradition, shopping online before you stuff the turkey, putting the turkey in oven and going out shopping."

The Monday after Thanksgiving is usually far from the busiest online shopping day of the year, but it is typically one of the 10 busiest. It was dubbed "Cyber Monday" by the National Retail Federation trade group in 2005 to describe the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday.

The thinking was that shoppers who lacked broadband Internet access at home would wait until returning to work to look online. Now that most homes have broadband, that rationale has faded.


Finding a once-in-a-lifetime deal

Analysts expect Dec. 14, the last day consumers can order goods and have them arrive before Christmas, will be the busiest online shopping day.

Keith Harris, 36, an IT consultant for Hewlett-Packard, went out Friday for in-store sales, but he waited until Monday to buy a Playstation 3 because Walmart.com offered it at the best price on Monday — in a bundle with two games and a movie, for $369.

"You're looking for that once-in-a-lifetime deal," he said.

Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru predicts online holiday sales will rise 8 percent to $44.7 billion. So far, the weekend results are "strong reinforcement of how Web sales continue to outpace store sales," she said. Online sales account for about 7 percent of retailers' total sales, though that increases to about 10 percent during the holidays.

Scott Savitz, CEO of Shoebuy.com, one of the largest online shoe retailers, reported that traffic has been robust since Thanksgiving. He expects that Black Friday, not the Monday after Thanksgiving as it had in past years, will mark the first big surge in sales and traffic for his site.

"There is definitely a behavioral shift," said Savitz. "Clearly, people are seeing that Black Friday will be the start of the holiday season, no matter whether you are online or offline."


Sources: MSNBC, CNBC, Amazon.com