At $733 Million, Cyber Monday Biggest Yet
By Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 12/3/2007
Reston, Va. — Consumers spent $733 million online on Nov. 26, up 21% from last year and the highest amount ever for the Monday after Thanksgiving, according to e-commerce research firm comScore.
In a similar pattern to in-store spending on Black Friday, the research group found that while the number of Cyber Monday online buyers was up 38%, the average spent per transaction fell by 12%.
During the Nov. 1-26 period, consumers spent $10.7 billion online, a 17% increase over the same period in 2006, the company said.
Of the four big brick-and-mortar retailers among the Nov. 26 top-10 online retail sites, three — Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Circuit City — saw site-visitor numbers more than double the daily average of the four prior weeks. The number of site visitors at Target was up 86% over the average, comScore reported.
Free shipping is perhaps the most prevalent online promotion, being offered by merchants as diverse as Target and Crate & Barrel, according to comScore.
Online deals for the Monday after Thanksgiving are now offered by 72% of retailers, up from 42% two years ago, the company said.
One reason Cyber Monday scores much higher online sales than other Thanksgiving weekend days is that 60% of the dollars spent that day come via work computers, rather than the other two main sources, home and university computers.
