comScore: 'Black Friday' Ecommerce Online Sales Up Just 1pct

[engine]

comScore: 'Black Friday' Ecommerce Online Sales Up [reuters.com]Just 1pct

U.S. retail sales online rose 1 percent on Black Friday, the traditional start to the holiday shopping season, to $534 million, tracking firm comScore said on Sunday.Combined with web sales on U.S. Thanksgiving the previous day, the figure rose 2 percent, but sales are down 4 percent to date in November from a year ago, comScore said. The firm has forecast total web holiday sales to be flat this year at $29.2 billion, compared with a 19 percent rise in 2007.

[LifeinAsia]

It will be interesting to see what happens today on Cyber Monday.

[nealrodriguez]

u.s. sales as a whole were up like 3 percent to $10.6 billion; a lot of spending power for a recession.

[wolfadeus]

From my own stats: Traffic about 100% up in the past 12 months; revenue about 15 percent down. I just received another e-mail from an advertiser who wants a 30 percent discount for his banners...

[JS_Harris]

I don't think the term "recession" can be applied in a blanket statement anymore. There are very clearly groups of people who are absolutely fine and others who are devastated, it's no longer a problem shared by everyone.

Some sources of income are more recession proof than others and many people have been preparing for tough times since our former leaders elect went to war which is always expensive and devastating in the end.

[edited by: JS_Harris at 9:39 pm (utc) on Dec. 1, 2008]

[nealrodriguez]

i don't think it could ever be applied as a blanket statement; the economic environment is as good as you make it between your two ears.

i know people making 6 figure USD incomes in the third world that equal a few million here. and these are places where 9 year olds pick rotten oranges off the street and sniff shoe glue to stave off hunger.

[uhzoomzip]

November wasn't all that awesome for us but I think it was due to a few factors not necessarily in any particular order.

1: People more preoccupied with the elections this year than any recent election and so this drew away customers for the beginning of the month. (Not sure but I think it was a factor)

2: Thanksgiving ended up coming significantly later than last year and so a bit less perceived urgency.

3: Yes of course there was a lot of talk of recession (honestly I feel this to be the least of all reasons)

4: On page factors including in stock / out of stock notifiers which were not there last year combined with a number of out of stocks (I think this was the biggest factor)

That being said we have solved most of our out of stock issues and this December is looking good (like we wll have an increase and it will be much better than 1%)

:)

Just my thoughts.

[derekwong28]

If spending is up but the merchants' profits are down because of steep discounts, then it is going to be a Pyrrhic victory.

In Iceland where the economy has basically collapsed, you can see people splashing out on big purchases because they fear that they will not be able to afford it in furture because of their collapsing currency.

[nomis5]

Even better news from Comscore about the "bellweather" Cyber Monday.

The link is:
[comscore.com...]

The bones of the article for Cyber Monday are:

"However, Cyber Monday saw $846 million in online spending, up 15 percent. The four-day period from Black Friday through Cyber Monday saw e-commerce spending jump 13 percent as both weekend days and Monday all achieved double-digit gains."

That (15%) is a huge increase over last year, and the 13% over the four day period indicates is not just a one off. Stunning. All that against a background of the credit crunch.