Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sales Up 47 Percent
By Anna Johnson on December 6th, 2009Retail Decisions, which provides card fraud prevention, payment processing and card issuing services, estimates that U.S. online retail sales reached $3.1 billion on Black Friday, a massive 52 percent increase over sales on the same day in 2008, and $2.2 billion on Cyber Monday, 35 percent higher than in 2008.
Retail Decisions estimates that the combined days’ sales of $5.3 billion reflects an increase of 47 percent over those last year, and indicates renewed consumer confidence in the economy.
Interestingly, Retail Decisions found that online sales on Cyber Monday – traditionally the second busiest online shopping day in the U.S. behind Black Friday (the day after the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday) – peaked at between 1pm and 2pm EST, with over $147 million transacted in just that hour.
What accounted for the surge in consumer spending?
According to Retail Decisions CEO, Carl Clump:
“Online retailers started discounting heavily on Black Friday, luring consumers with cash back offers, free shipping and special deals on the most popular products. Whilst Black Friday was by far the busiest day, retailers continued to compete for sales on Cyber Monday as shoppers scooped online deals.”
Retail Decisions found that the top 10 selling consumer products online on Black Friday and Cyber Monday were:
- TomTom GPS Navigation System
- Kodak Digital Camera
- Nintendo Wii
- Ice Age 3
- Sony Digital Camera
- Sansui 19″ LCD TV
- Sony Bravia LCD TV
- Ginii Digital Photo Frame
- Playstation 3 120GB
- Samsung Digital Camera
