“With Thanksgiving now behind us and most consumers returning to work tomorrow [Monday], we can look forward with anticipation to Cyber Monday, which according to norms we’ve observed over the past three years should be the heaviest online shopping day of the season with sales approaching $1.5 billion or even higher,” said Gian Fulgoni, comScore chairman, in a statement. Sexton, who plans to spend up to $4,000 this season, already shopped online on the day after Thanksgiving known as Black Friday and found a laptop from Best Buy for $399, a $200 savings, among other deals. Indeed, online sales on Thanksgiving Day, traditionally not a popular day for online shopping, rose 32 percent over last year to $633 million, according to comScore. And online sales on Black Friday were up 26 percent from the same day last year, to $1.042 billion. “With Black Friday online sales up 26% and surpassing $1 billion for the first time, coupled with early reports indicating that Black Friday sales in retail stores were down 1.8%, we can now confidently call it a multichannel-marketing phenomenon,” added Fulgoni.
– Black Friday sales were down year-on-year, but this year's Cyber Monday is expected to be the biggest online shopping day in history. Spending on the year's most important day for online sales is expected to top last year's $1.25 billion by around 20% to hit $1.5 billion, the chairman of digital analysis group ComScore tells MarketWatch. Online spending on the Monday after Thanksgiving has more than doubled over the last five years. But Black Friday itself saw plenty of online shopping, with sales nudging over $1 billion for the first time even as shoppers thronged brick-and-mortar stores, the AP reports. Analysts say that Cyber Monday may soon cease to be the busiest day for online sales, since fewer people now rely on computers at work to do their shopping. Online sales on Thanksgiving Day this year surged by 32% over 2011 to reach $633 million.