Record Cyber Monday spending tops US$3b

Amazon is still the king of e-commerce, claiming a commanding 36 percent marketshare on the biggest online shopping day of the year, according to Slice Intelligence.

Shopping using mobile devices accounted for 26 per cent of total online sales, up from 19 per cent a year earlier, Adobe’s report said.

That’s even though the holiday has lost some of its luster as online sales on Thanksgiving and Black Friday pick up.

As of 7 p.m. Monday, Adobe estimated Cyber Monday sales would rise 12 percent to $2.98 billion by the end of the day. As for the winners, social media crowned e-Bay, Amazon, Target, Walmart and the Gap as the champions of your online attention. For the protection of AP and its licensors, content may not be copied, altered orredistributed in any form. Please see our terms of service for more information. Online retailers racked up the strongest growth rate on Thanksgiving with a 43.4% increase in same store sales, followed by Black Friday at 20.3%.

Yes, Amazon’s market share was down a bit year-over-year, but with the possible exception of a small widening of market share from Walmart, the traditional retailers didn’t have much to do with that. This year the Black Friday shopping magic didn’t work that miraculously, at least offline.

In the announcement, the company stressed that Cyber Monday was the biggest sales day of the period, with peak order volume occurring between 9-11pm ET.

Last year, retailers experienced shoppers on Black Friday crowding some stores, so they hired more security staff this year to be ready for a repeat.

“Cyber Monday is becoming Cyber Week”, said Marlene Morris Towns, a Georgetown University marketing professor who studies online shopping. The retailer offered a discount of 15% on total purchases made on Monday. Target showed the deepest discounts on average price across items, with 6.8% or less from the day before Thanksgiving through the day after Black Friday.

The company took over 35% of all Black Friday sales, beating second-place Best Buy – which took 8% – by a long shot.

That’s why, for the first time, Amazon pushed exclusive deals via its mobile shopping app over the holiday season, providing more than 150 “handpicked, lightning” sales, such as a $149 50-inch HDTV, to customers who had downloaded the app.

Some retailers have picked up on these shifting dynamics better than others. This ties you in to that destination to start your shopping and if you find what you’re looking for you’re unlikely then to do any price comparison… especially if you inevitably find a lot of the time that the marketplace is competitive.