Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Black Monday Online Shopping Results Rise 26 Percent

comScore Networks is reporting that its survey of online spending shows that year to year sales increased 26% for the critical "Black Monday", the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday. The web traffic analysis firm found that non-travel online spending rose to $485M versus $386M last year. For the entire Thanksgiving weekend (Thurs-Sun) the firm reported $925M in purchases, up from $737M last year. In related results, Los Angeles-based comparison shopping firm PriceGrabber.com said that it saw an 87% increase in the number of referrals driven from its site Monday, as workers took advantage of high speed connections at work to do some holiday shoppping. PriceGrabber reports that the most popular categories of online shopping last week were digital cameras, gaming consoles, apparel, MP3 players, and Plasma TVs. This year's early results by various firms shows a healthy increase in online shopping, with most shoppers making their purchases from work.