Online Holiday Shoppers Drive Record Sales Growth
Early 2011 online holiday retail sales surged over the past five days as consumers gobbled up deals and hot ticket items from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday, driving record double digit growth for retailers. Throughout the weekend, IBM’s online retail benchmark analyzed and revealed consumer shopping trends, such as the increasing influence of mobile holiday shoppers led by consumers using iPhones, iPads, Android phones and other devices to research deals and comparison shop for online bargains. Dozens of media outlets across North America reported on IBM’s Smarter Commerce initiative and analysis of Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping trends and sales growth.
IBM’s Viewpoint
IBM’s key insights from its analysis of the early holiday sales results include:
— Online Shopping Surge: Cyber bargain hunters drove a nearly 40 percent increase in online Thanksgiving day spending, 24.3 percent growth in Black Friday online sales and a 33 percent jump in Cyber Monday sales compared with the same period in 2010.
— Mobile Bargain Hunters: Consumers using their mobile devices to shop accounted for 14.3 percent of all Black Friday online retail traffic and 10.8 percent of traffic on Cyber Monday.
— iPod & iPad Influence: iPhone and iPad shoppers generated more retail purchases than consumers using other mobile devices, accounting for 10.2 percent of all online retail traffic on Black Friday and 7.4 percent on Cyber Monday.
What They’re Saying
USA Today reported that retail sales broke records over Thanksgiving weekend and quoted IBM Smarter Commerce Chief Strategy Officer John Squire http://ibm.co/vlrCpc
In a TV segment aired from the IBM Research Industry Solutions Lab, CNBC previewed Cyber Monday sales and detailed insights from IBM’s online retail benchmark study http://ibm.co/uM5MDj
Fox Business spotlighted IBM’s analysis of Cyber Monday shopping trends http://ibm.co/uAIoDt
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