Retail e-commerce spending for the first 29 days of the November-December 2010 holiday season reached $13.55 billion, up 13% from the corresponding days in 2009, as Cyber Monday recorded $1.028 billion in online spending, up 16% from a year earlier, and the heaviest online spending day in history, according to comScore.
Growth Driven by Increase in Spending per Buyer
Cyber Monday's 16% sales growth was driven primarily by an increase in average spending per buyer (up 12%) while the number of buyers on Cyber Monday grew by a lower 4% to 9 million. Average spending per transaction grew 10% to $60.05, while the total number of transactions increased 6% to 17.1 million.
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Buying at Work Drives Spending
Nearly one-half (48.9%) of the dollars spent online at US websites originated from work computers, down 3.8 percentage points from the previous year. Buying from home comprised the majority of the remaining share (45.4%) while buying at US websites from international locations accounted for 5.8% of sales.
Below, weekly holiday online sales trends, from 2005 to November 30, 2010:
"Cyber Monday was a historic day for e-commerce as we saw daily spending surpass $1 billion for the first time," said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni. "The online holiday shopping season has clearly gotten off to a very strong start, which is welcome news."
"At the same time, it's important to note that some of the early strength in consumer spending is almost certainly the result of retailers' heavier-than-normal promotional and discounting activity at this early point in the season. So, while we anticipate that there will be more billion-dollar spending days ahead as we get deeper into the season, only time will tell if overall consumer online spending remains at the elevated levels we've seen thus far."
