IBM: Black Friday Online Retail Spending Up 24.3 Percent

[dkf]

Thanksgiving brought record online retail sales for the holiday, with spending up 39.3 percent over Thanksgiving 2010. And today, IBM Coremetrics data shows a 24.3 percent growth in online sales on Black Friday compared to the same period last year.

Mobile traffic on Black Friday was 14.3 percent of all retail traffic compared to 5.6 percent in 2010. Sales on mobile devices surged to 9.8 percent from 3.2 percent year over year. As we saw with PayPal stats from Thanksgiving and Black Friday, mobile shopping volume is increasing by over 500 percent this year.

Mobile shopping was actually led by Apple devices, with the iPhone and iPad ranking one and two for consumers shopping on mobile devices (5.4 percent and 4.8 percent respectively). Android came in third at 4.1 percent. Collectively iPhone and iPad accounted for 10.2 percent of all online retail traffic on Black Friday.

As predicted by eBay, Google and others, tablets were a major platform for shoppers this year. IBM says that shoppers using the iPad led to more retail purchases more often per visit than other mobile devices with conversion rates reaching 4.6 percent compared to 2.8 percent for overall mobile devices.

http://m.techcrunch.com/2011/11/26/ibm-black-friday-online-retail-spending-up-24-3-percent/

[phasma ex machina]

1. Inflation?

[FBaggins]

4. Nope

More likely a continued shift toward online shopping... Along with (IMO), a forward shift of demand as sales start earlier and earlier.

[Prometheus Bound]

2. Well that's good. All our problems are over then.

It's so simple really. Just keep shopping!

[JI7]

3. aren't online "black friday" deals supposed to be "Cyber Mondays" ?

or do many think that means something else ?

[d_r]

5. I think there has been a switch

a few years ago, the mobs went out shopping on Friday, then shopped on-line Monday when they got back to work. They had internet access at work but not at home. Now they are taking their iphone with them and buying on-line as they go.

[TBF]

7. This year Cyber Monday effectively started on Thanksgiving for many companies -

I have been getting tons of email ads all weekend. I have done some shopping - the only item we bought at a store on Friday was a camera we had researched. A new model came out so the one we chose dropped significantly. We don't need the new version - this one has all the bells and whistles we need. We liked looking at it and checking it out in person. Everything else has been online deals (mostly gifts).

[FarCenter]

6. That iPhone and iPad users have a high propensity to spend is not surprise

That is why they have those devices in the first place.

It's a self-selected group.

I'd bet that people who drink Starbucks also spend more at Christmas.