Some additional observations since Cyber Monday include:
- The fastest-growing retail sites since Cyber Monday compared to the corresponding days last year (within the top 20 most frequently visited retail sites) were: Yahoo Shopping, Target, Apple, Circuit City and Toys "R" Us.
- A number of the traditionally more popular product categories for holiday gifts saw strong growth in dollar sales versus last year: video games, consoles and accessories (+170%), toys (+36%), computer hardware (+21%), sports and fitness (+19%).
Most Online Holiday Shopping Occurs at Work
Cyber Monday has historically represented the first significant spike in online holiday spending because it is the first working day after the Thanksgiving holiday, and shopping from work remains a key component of total online shopping behavior. For the first 30 days of the holiday season, 45.5 percent of all online retail spending came from work locations, edging out the 44.1 percent of spending from home. Even though the vast majority of Internet-enabled homes now have high speed connections, shopping from work remains a key component of online holiday retail spending," added Mr. Fulgoni.
"This suggests that the privacy afforded by shopping at work, without family members looking over one's shoulder, is one of the important factors in determining where consumers choose to shop online. Also interesting is that despite the declining value of the U.S. dollar, the share of spending from international locations dropped versus last year. This would appear to indicate that maturing international e- commerce markets are succeeding in keeping more foreign online spending overseas."
