Lawrence Gee | Marketing, Internet, Creativity, Strategy

Thoughts on Cyber Monday and the Rest of the Holiday Season

Cyber Monday, albeit with conflicting statistics, seems to have outperformed 2007.  comScore has stated that sales were 15% better. Nielson claims that shopping sites within its retail index saw 10% increased traffic from last year. It did say that top 500 retail sites were down 1% of traffic though. Among the winners seems to have been Amazon, which saw a 21% year over year growth in traffic, and according to Hitwise had 10.77% off all US traffic on Cyber Monday.

So is the 2008 Holiday retail sales doomed as predicted or has Cyber Monday shown a silver lining? I don’t envision death to retail but then again I also don’t see a Holiday season of anything better than flat growth. According to comScore, the Holiday Shopping is down by 2% overall including Cyber Monday.  As consumers become more Internet savvy, I’m really not surprised that overall internet traffic has picked up.  But I think most of this traffic growth is due to media’s influence of reporting huge deals by struggling retailers and consumers willingness to scour for deals and coupons.

Most of the deals this Holiday season seem to be 20% or 25% off with free shipping for Internet retailers. There seems to be a proliferation of these deals that are being remarketed as something new every week.  Not a bad option for those new 2009 clothing lines, sporting goods, or small electronics.  However, if you are in the market for anything larger, like the flat screen TV that I’m waiting for, I would be holding tight and waiting for the January clearance.

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