Cyber Monday Spending Up 15 Per Cent

They call it Cyber Monday, the first working day after Thanksgiving, when online spending is at its highest and sets the tone for the holiday retail season. A strong Cyber Monday bodes for a good season. A poor one, and well…

So how did this year’s Internet version of Groundhog Day fare? It should leave retailers smiling, up 15% on last year with $846 in sales, making it the second-busiest shopping online day in history, according to comScore.

The four-day weekend “saw e-commerce spending jump 13 percent as both weekend days and Monday all achieved double-digit gains,” the company reported. However, in the holiday season so far, online spending is down 2%, at $12.03 billion.

comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni said:

“Consumers are clearly responding positively to retailers’ aggressive online discounts. 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, up 15 percent over last year and ranking it as the second heaviest online spending day on record. This is an extremely encouraging development for retailers and we can but hope that their aggressive discounting has still left room for profits.”