Cyber Monday Sales Surge Nearly 20%

Cyber Monday sales rose 19.4% from the same day last year according to Coremetrics, which should create a great deal of hope that retail activity this holiday season will be better than expected, especially online.

A critical reason for the improvement is the average amount that people spent at e-commerce sites on Cyber Monday. The figure increased 8.3% to $194.89 as an average order value.

The data show that Cyber Monday may have been the best shopping day, in terms of sales, so far this year. It also shows that slower sales at bricks-and-mortar stores will be offset by activity online. The National Retail Federation expects sales for the holiday shopping season to be only 2.4% higher than last year.

Luxury goods sales did particularly well–up 23.4%. It is hard to tell this early whether that means middle class and poorer shoppers actually had very modest improvement in their online purchase activity. At any rate, the rich are feeling richer.

Analysts caution that many people have decided to buy their holiday gifts earlier in the season than has been the case in the past. These shoppers are attracted by huge discounts and free shipping which a number of polls show is critical to purchasing decisions.

No one knows whether the quick rise in online sales will steal from physical stores and mall traffic. It may be over a month before it is clear whether that happened.

The news is undoubtedly good for Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) and retailers like Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) and Target (NYSE: TGT), which have millions of visitors to their websites each year. Sales for smaller retailers which have sites may have suffered this Cyber Monday. Amazon.com, Target, and Wal-Mart were able to underwrite large discounts which means they may have stolen market share from the balance of the industry.

The problem with daily figures put out by research firms on the dollar value of purchases both online and in stores is that they say little about the future. It is data which says something about the past, although perhaps not accurately. To that extent, it is not very useful.

Douglas A. McIntyre