NEW YORK - Like their counterparts at the malls, online merchants finally got some relief with the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season, spurred by a bevy of deals and free shipping offers. But the stronger-than-expected bump in online sales Monday couldn't cancel out a lackluster November.
Meanwhile, ShopperTrak RCT Corp., a research company that tracks retail sales for more than 50,000 outlets, released more data Wednesday showing that the better-than-expected sales boost on Friday, the traditional opening for the holiday shopping season at stores, dropped off quickly during the rest of the weekend -- resulting in a mixed start to the season. Figures from SpendingPulse, a data service provided by MasterCard Advisors that estimates U.S. retail sales across all payment forms including cash and check, pointed to more signs of a bleak November for the nation's stores -- despite Friday's surge.
Those numbers augured poorly for the monthly sales figures retailers were set to report today.
Internet research company comScore Inc. said Wednesday that online sales spiked 15 percent to $846 million on "Cyber Monday," which was named by the National Retail Federation in 2005 to describe the surge in online spending when customers return to work after Thanksgiving and shop from their desks.
Nielsen Online, a service of the Nielsen Co., reported a 10 percent increase in Web traffic to online shopping sites Monday, fueled by beauty items, toys and video games. Ken Cassar, vice president of industry insights for Nielsen Online, said in a statement that he expects next Monday to be the peak day for online shopping traffic.
According to comScore, e-commerce spending Friday through Monday jumped 13 percent, with two-figure days as both weekend days and Monday. From Nov. 1 through Dec. 1, however, online spending fell 2 percent. Still, comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni described the big boost as "extremely encouraging." ComScore forecasts that online spending for the holidays will be unchanged from last year, when sales rose 19 percent from 2006.
"This is an extremely encouraging development for retailers, and we can but hope that their aggressive discounting has still left room for profits," Fulgoni said.
Gene Munster, senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray, wrote in a report released Wednesday that the robust traffic and sales reported by Nielsen and comScore were a "positive" for online retailer Amazon.com, which is considered a barometer of online spending. Munster was expecting comScore to report a smaller 5 percent sales increase on Cyber Monday. Still, he added that while "Cyber Monday appears to have been a positive for [Amazon]," it doesn't change his belief that "the consumer will be weak in the December quarter."
