Holiday shopping on the web in the US rose 17 per cent to a record $2.04 billion on 'Cyber Monday', researcher ComScore said.
This year’s 'Cyber Monday', so named because of a surge in online retail sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving, remains the busiest Internet shopping day so far this year, topping Black Friday’s $1.51 billion in desktop web sales.
Still, growth on 'Cyber Monday' is slowing, as consumers spread out their purchases to other days. On the same day last year, online retail sales on desktop computers rose 18 per cent.
Shoppers have been responding to earlier promotions at e-commerce websites such as Amazon.com, which kicked off its holiday deals a week before Black Friday. As gift-buying creeps in earlier in the month and includes Thanksgiving Day, the 'Cyber Monday' peak is becoming less pronounced.
Even as spending shifts between days, the broader trend is robust growth, ComScore said. Online spending from 1 November through 'Cyber Monday' totalled $26.7 billion, up 16 per cent from the same period last year, the researcher said. That compares with last year’s growth rate of 8 per cent for the same period.
"The online holiday shopping season is clearly going very well at the moment and is currently running ahead of forecast,” ComScore chairman emeritus Gian Fulgoni said in a statement.
“Varying reports have also indicated weakness in the consumer economy due to flagging bricks-and-mortar sales over the holiday weekend, but what we may really be seeing is an accelerating shift to online buying, as mobile phones spur increased showrooming activity. The data we’re seeing suggests it may be more a change in shopping behaviour than a lack of consumer demand."
Online retailers have an advantage over those that combine e-commerce and bricks-and-mortar stores, which have had a disappointing start to the holidays because of slow foot traffic at physical locations.
Total retail spending fell 11 per cent from a year earlier to $50.9 billion in the four-day period from Thanksgiving to Sunday, the National Retail Federation said. It was the second year in a row that sales declined during the post-Thanksgiving weekend. The NRF had predicted a 4.1-per-cent sales gain for November and December -- the best performance since 2011.
Bloomberg News, edited by ESM
