Maryland Business

I once worked with an editor who bristled every year at this time. The reason? Stories about “Cyber Monday.”

It was all marketing hokum, he said. How are the supposed online shopping numbers even verifiable, he’d ask. He questioned running Cyber Monday stories even as every business news competitor with a homepage ran multiple versions throughout the day.

Today, it’s a hot trending topic on Twitter, and a promoted one no less, as well as ubiquitous hashtag (#CyberMonday). The U.S. Attorney General’s Office used the occasion to unveil a sting netting 82 Web domain names for allegedly peddling counterfeit goods. And various reports out Monday are predicting a record 106.9 million Americans shopping online.

Shoppers are taking advantage of one-day deals and free shipping and in the process boosting Cyber Monday sales almost 11 percent over last year.

That prediction comes from Shop.org, part of the National Retail Federation, in tandem with BIGresearch — which conducted the shopper poll — and that’s only fitting.

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While clothes and books were the big attractions for in-store shoppers on Black Friday weekend, Cyber Monday — so far — is all about consumer electronics.

I spoke to Graham Jones, vice president, merchant accounts for PriceGrabber.com, midway through the day, and he said online shoppers were already creating a clear trend. GPS devices and Nintendo Wii-related items were overwhelmingly taking up the top slots in sales halfway through the day (on the East Coast).

“The big story in previous years was HD-TVs and plasmas,” said Jones. “They were at the top last year, and now they’re not even in the top 20 this year….People still want to buy electronics, but they don’t want spend as much [as prior years].”

Jones also said more people are buying practical gifts this year, and PriceGrabber is seeing an increase in traffic for home improvement and auto service purchases. PriceGrabber is an online comparison shopping site that tracks its traffic by its referrals to merchants.

“So you have people wanting to gift but to [help the recipient] save money also,” he said.

The online spending typically begins around 9 a.m. Eastern and continues until about 8 p.m. EST/5 p.m. PST, corresponding with the workday. Peaks are typically around lunch hours (between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. EST) and towards the end of the workday (between 4 and 6 p.m. EST), according to PriceGrabber’s statistics.

So fess up…who here’s been shopping at work? And what did you get?
Top products for Cyber Monday as of noon EST
1. Wii Console
2. Apple 8GB iPod touch – Black
3. nuvi 255W Wide-Screen Automotive GPS
4. iPod touch 16GB MP3 Player (Internal Flash Drive, 22 Hours)
5. Wii Fit
6. nuvi 265WT GPS
7. Office 2007 Home and Student (Full Product, PC)
8. Digital Rebel XSI 12MP Black Digital SLR Camera w/ EF-S 18-55mm Kit
9. nuvi 765T GPS
10. D90 SLR Digital Camera Kit
11. Xbox 360 Premium System
12. Apple 8GB iPod nano Blue
13. nuvi 205W GPS
14. Apple 32GB iPod touch – Black
15. Nintendo DS Limited Edition Pokemon Pack

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Individual spending during Black Friday weekend (the Friday, Saturday and Sunday after Thanksgiving) was down 8 percent this year to $343.31, or about $29 less than last year, according to the National Retail Federation.

And that’s even though the number of shoppers increased for the three-day kick-start to the holiday shopping season — 195 million shoppers visited stores and websites over Black Friday weekend, up from 172 million last year.

Shoppers appear to be diversifying their limited spending as purchases in most categories went up or stayed the same over last year. Toys, sporting goods, health/beauty items and gift cards were up over last year. The most popular purchases were clothing (50.9 percent), consumer electronics (36.9 percent) and books (40.3 percent), which remained nearly unchanged over last year.

The only categories to see a decline in purchases were home decor and “miscellaneous/other.” To see the full survey results, click here.

Here’s what NRF President and CEO Tracy Mullin had to say: “While retailers are encouraged by the number of Americans who shopped over Black Friday weekend, they know they have their work cut out for them to keep people coming back through Christmas. Shoppers can continue to expect retailers to focus on low prices and bargains through the end of December.”

While Black Friday has typically NOT been the biggest sales day of the year (that has usually come during the first two weeks of December), the Friday after Thanksgiving in 2008 did end up being the top day of that year for retailers.

Considering how the rest of the season went (a total spending decline of about 3 percent), it seems retailers have every reason to be worried about what this year’s Black Friday weekend means for the rest of their season. And they had better be hoping that this year’s Black Friday isn’t yet again the biggest shopping day of the year.

Maybe some retailers can make up the difference with online sales. But that’s looking shaky too — 28 percent of shoppers during Black Friday weekend bought something online, according to the NRF. That’s down from 34 percent last year.

Stay tuned for another blog today on a Cyber Monday sales update from PriceGrabber.com’s president, Laura Conrad.

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With Cyber Monday coming up in less than two weeks, my inbox has started filling up with retail predictions, trends, spending forecasts — the works. But one release veered left where everyone else was going right: when “The Myth of Cyber Monday” popped up in my messages list I was immediately intrigued.

Compiled by Northern California-based Permuto Discoveries, the graphic (available here) outlines statistical reasons why Cyber Monday, billed as the busiest online shopping day of the year, is not and never has been the top dog of online shopping days.

The term Cyber Monday was originally coined in 2005 by Shop.org after a significant number of  retailers reported a sizable increase in online sales the Monday after Thanksgiving. Since then, sales have grown from $486 million on Cyber Monday in 2005 to $846 million last year.

But neither one of those days was the busiest online shopping day of the year, according to Permuto.

$556 million in online sales took place on Dec. 12, 2005 and $887 million in sales on Dec. 9 last year made those days the busiest online shopping days of their years.

But further on, the graphic notes Cyber Monday’s sales totals are getting closer to the top online day of the year. That could mean that consumers and retailers are buying (no pun intended) the hype anyway and creating a self fulfilling prophecy.

Last year, Cyber Monday was only about $41 million off from the true busiest online day of the year. Could this year be the year it actually lives up to its name?

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