This holiday season, Black Friday deals were available on Thursday. Many stores started their discounts as early as 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day at both brick-and-mortar and online stores. The outcome: Thanksgiving Day sales increased by 32% over last year (from $479 million to $633 million).1
Shift from Cyber Monday to Cyber Week doesn’t Negatively Affect Sales
Many online retailers are offering their Cyber Monday deals all this week (Walmart, Amazon.com and Target).2 Yet, Cyber deals offered all week haven’t dampened Monday’s sales. Cyber Monday saw online sales rack up to $1.46 billion, up nearly $0.5 billion from 2011. While, overall sales increased 17% since last year, digital content and subscriptions saw the greatest increase of 28%. Coming in second and third in the top category sales, consumer electronics saw an increase of 24% and computer hardware an increase of 22%.3 In the future, we may see that change if consumers rely on deals and products being available all week long.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
According to ComScore chairman, Gian Fulgoni, Cyber Monday began in 2005 when Shop.org used the phrase “Cyber” to call attention to a noticeable increase in online spending on the Monday after Thanksgiving weekend. At the time, Cyber Monday sales were still low in comparison to the top ten peak selling days of the season. But, as more and more companies chose to offer deals on that day, sales rose to break the billion dollar mark as we’ve seen in the past two years.4
Looking Ahead
How much longer can the holiday shopping season get? I heard someone casually joke over the weekend that before we know it we’ll be starting the holiday shopping season immediately following Christmas in July. If the sales trend the way they have for the past four years, we will continue to see significant increases in holiday spending for the first three weeks in December, surpassing both Black Friday and Cyber Monday’s numbers, dropping off only a few days before December 25th.5
1 “Cyber Monday Spending Soars to $1.46 Billion, Ranking as Heaviest U.S. Online Spending Day in History,” from comscore.com.
2“Cyber Monday Deals Lure More Shoppers on Mobile Devices,” from abcnews.go.com.
3 “Cyber Monday Spending Soars to $1.46 Billion, Ranking as Heaviest U.S. Online Spending Day in History,” from comscore.com.
4 “Cyber Monday Spending Soars to $1.46 Billion, Ranking as Heaviest U.S. Online Spending Day in History,” from comscore.com.
5 “Cyber Monday Spending Soars to $1.46 Billion, Ranking as Heaviest U.S. Online Spending Day in History,” from comscore.com.
Image: Sociable.co
