On the heels of data showing a record number of shoppers hit the stores over the holiday weekend, one digital analysis group says spending on the most important shopping day of the year for online retailers — known as Cyber Monday –could surpass $1.5 billion.
According to data released Sunday from comScore Inc. SCOR 0.00% , Cyber Monday spending is expected to exceed the $1.25 billion reached in 2011 for a gain of 20%. Spending on Cyber Monday — a marketing term coined back in 2005 — has more than doubled in the past five years.
“With Thanksgiving now behind us and most consumers returning to work tomorrow [Monday], we can look forward with anticipation to Cyber Monday, which according to norms we’ve observed over the past three years should be the heaviest online shopping day of the season with sales approaching $1.5 billion or even higher,” said Gian Fulgoni, comScore chairman, in a statement.
Forecasts for Cyber Monday sales are slightly less buoyant than what comScore has reported for other key shopping days. The group’s data showed that online sales for Black Friday surpassed $1 billion for the first time. Sales rose 26% to $1.04 billion from $816 million seen on Black Friday in 2011.
ComScore data showed that Thanksgiving Day online sales grew 32% from a year earlier, to $633 million .
Fulgoni says the data point to the idea that Black Friday is growing more prominent in the e-commerce channel, particularly for shoppers who want to avoid heavy crowds.
“With Black Friday online sales up 26% and surpassing $1 billion for the first time, coupled with early reports indicating that Black Friday sales in retail stores were down 1.8%, we can now confidently call it a multi-channel-marketing phenomenon,” said Fulgoni.
Read more: Market Watch
