Cyber Monday shopping sets record
Shoppers logged on in force for Cyber Monday, spending just over $1 billion at online retailers.
It was the heaviest online shopping day in history, representing a 16% increase from last year’s $887-million Cyber Monday haul, according to research firm ComScore.
The shopping bonanza bookends the Thanksgiving weekend along with Black Friday. Whereas the day after Thanksgiving is associated with hordes cramming into malls at the break of dawn, Cyber Monday deals are designed to draw buyers online.
Nearly half of all shoppers — 48.9% — hopped on computers at work to shop, while 45.4% made their digital purchases from home.
And there were more buyers spending more money on more items — 9 million people spent an average of $114.24. That equates to roughly $60 for each of the 17.1 million transactions.
For the first 29 days of November, sales online hit $13.5 billion, 13% more than in the same period in 2009, the ComScore data found. E-retailers raked in $648 million from Black Friday alone, a 9% increase from a year earlier.
Other research firms also concluded that this year’s Cyber Monday will be the one to beat. Online sales for the day, according to Coremetrics, were 31.1% higher than Black Friday purchases and 19.4% higher than Cyber Monday sales in 2009.
Luxury items and mobile phones and tablets were popular, the firm said.
