WebProNews

With the economy in an official recession and the continuing talk of doom and gloom, comScore has released some positive numbers about online holiday spending so far this year.

For the holiday season-to-date, $12.03 billion has been spent online, a two percent decline compared to the same time last year. The good news is that Cyber Monday saw $846 million in online spending, a 15 percent increase.

The four-day period from Black Friday through Cyber Monday saw ecommerce spending increase 13 percent as both weekend days and Monday all saw double-digit gains.

"Mark Twain might have said: 'Rumors of the death of online holiday shopping have been greatly exaggerated'," said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni "Consumers are clearly responding positively to retailers' aggressive online discounts."

"With Cyber Monday promotions beginning in earnest over the Thanksgiving weekend, consumers have finally begun to open their wallets, setting off a streak of four consecutive days of extremely strong growth, and culminating in a Cyber Monday that racked up an impressive $846 million in online spending, up 15 percent over last year and ranking it as the second heaviest online spending day on record."

"This is an extremely encouraging development for retailers and we can but hope that their aggressive discounting has still left room for profits."
 
Other findings from the comScore holiday retail survey, conducted from November 28-December 1 looked at consumers views of the 2008 holiday shopping season.

Just over half (51%) of consumers indicated that the amount of promotions and discounts is higher this year than last year, while only 12 percent said there were fewer, suggesting that retailers are having to be more aggressive in discounting to encourage consumer spending.

Over a third (39%) of consumers said there seemed to be fewer people out shopping in retail store this year than last year, while only 7 percent thought there were more.