Strong Signs for Cyber Monday

Somehow, I've so far managed to avoid shopping for gifts today (after avoiding the malls this past Friday), but there are still quite a few hours left, so there's a good chance I'll eventually join the hordes of people going online to join the Cyber Monday festivities. And according to the Wall Street Journal, there should be a lot of spending going on.

The article quotes Fiona Dias, executive vice president of strategy and marketing at GSI Commerce Inc., who said, "All indications are that Cyber Monday will be a strong day across the industry." Last year, Cyber Monday sales fell a few million short of $850 million, and this year, predictions are close to $900 million, according to comScore Inc., a marketing research company. That group reported that shoppers spent nearly $595 million online on Black Friday, which is an improvement of 11 percent from last year.

According to Andrew Lipsman, an analyst at comScore, as quoted in the article, "Black Friday will probably be a pretty reasonable indicator of what happens on Cyber Monday. We would expect strong growth rates."

Interestingly enough, Cyber Monday wasn't even the biggest online shopping day last year. It was only the third highest. The top day? December 9, of all days, when $887 million in online sales took place. I'm guessing that was the cut-off day at some of the bigger online retailers to make sure items get shipped in time for Christmas. Not that I would know anything about procrastinating, of course.

Photo courtesy of garethjmsaunders, via Flickr