Strong Online Sales Won’t Last
By Anna Johnson on December 5th, 2008U.S. ecommerce sales over the weekend following Thanksgiving – ‘Black Friday’ through ‘Cyber Monday’ – were up 13 percent over those last year, according to comScore data.
In particular, the Monday after Thanksgiving (December 1, 2008) saw the second highest level of online sales ever achieved (the highest being sales on December 10, 2007). Online sales this past Monday were $846 million, 15 percent higher than those in the previous year.
Such promising sales online are not, however, likely to be indicative of holiday sales overall. Not only does e-commerce constitute just 7 percent of all retail sales, but online sales are still 2 percent lower than in 2007. Indeed, most industry pundits expect the recession to severely impede retail sales during the coming months.
Source: Claire Cain Miller, “An Online Sales Boom That May Not Last”, The New York Times, December 3, 2008
