Nov 30, 2008

ComScore: Black Friday e-commerce hits $534 millionBy Jonathan SkillingsNews.CNET.com

It wasn’t a blockbuster, but Black Friday wasn’t a bust, either.

ComScore on Sunday reported that online, nontravel retail sales on the Friday after Thanksgiving, traditionally a big day for consumer spending, reached $534 million.

That’s up from the same day a year ago, but just barely — e-tail sales rose just 1 percent, from $531 million.

On Saturday, comparison-shopping site PriceGrabber.com said that Web shopping traffic on Black Friday was up 11 percent. The Nintendo Wii was the most popular item, according to both PriceGrabber and eBay.

Sales on Thanksgiving Day itself rose 6 percent to $288 million, up from $272 million in 2007, ComSore said.

But for the four weeks of November through Friday the 28th, retail e-commerce dropped to $10.4 billion, down 4 percent from $10.8 billion for the same period in 2007, according to ComScore.

For the full holiday season, even Friday’s slight gain may look good. ComScore predicted that for November and December, online sales will be flat compared with 2007, coming in again at $29.2 billion.

A somewhat cheerier report Sunday came from the National Retail Federation. The NRF’s Black Friday Weekend survey — covering Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and predictions for Sunday — posits 172 million shoppers visiting Web sites and brick-and-mortar stores for the four days, up from 147 million last year.

Holiday sales will rise 2.2 percent this year to $470.4 billion, the NRF projects.

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