Retailers rejoice: Cyber Monday sales figures rise

E-commerce spending on the first workday after the long Thanksgiving weekend jumped 15%, to $846 million from $733 million a year earlier, according to a ComScore report released Wednesday. Web shoppers started buying more on Thanksgiving and kept going through the weekend, the research firm said.

The boost provided much-needed relief for online merchants, which saw sales drop 2%, to $12 billion, from Nov. 1 through Monday -- the first-ever year-over-year decline after more than a decade of double-digit increases. But retailers may have had to slash their profit margins to get consumers to buy.

"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," ComScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said. "This is an extremely encouraging development for retailers, and we can but hope that their aggressive discounting has still left room for profits."

Today major retailers will report monthly sales figures for November. Despite a healthy Black Friday, the numbers are expected to decline from last year's November results and could be among the worst since at least 2000, according to Thomson Reuters.

Poor sales figures would cast further gloom on what is forecast to be one of the worst holiday shopping season in decades.

Cyber Monday's stronger-than-expected online sales echoed the Black Friday gains for brick-and-mortar stores. Retail sales on the day after Thanksgiving rose 3% over last year to $10.6 billion, according to ShopperTrak RCT Corp., which monitors sales at more than 50,000 stores.

Online retailers posted smaller gains that day, with Internet sales rising 1% to $534 million, ComScore said.

Already this holiday shopping season has been one of the most heavily promoted in years. With five fewer shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year than in 2007, retailers are pulling out all the stops, dangling discounts and free shipping to nudge reluctant buyers.

"Our customers responded well to our deals," said Sally Fouts, a spokeswoman for Amazon.com Inc. "Customers should just keep checking back."