Chicago (IL) – The expectations for Black Friday were shaky at best and it was clear that this year would be different than 2007 or 2006. But as fragile as the overall economy looks at this time, the fact that key online retailers saw traffic and revenue growth could be seen as a light in the dark. However, whether you see that light or not depends on your point of view.

Looking at economic data these days isn’t fun. Today we learned that the U.S. is now officially confirmed to be in a state of recession, and actually may have been in a decline since the beginning of the year, the Dow lost nearly 700 points in Monday trading and there are few who are not affected by this downturn in one way or the other. Positive news are rare these days and if we hear that there has been some sort of growth in Black Friday online traffic and sales, one could consider this piece of news a bright spot.

Nielsen Netratings estimates that Internet traffic to 120 representative online retailers grew by about 10% over the same period in 2007 and ended up at 31.7 million unique visitors. This number is echoed by price comparison site Pricegrabber.com, which estimated the growth at 11%. Growth to different sites, varied, of course, with the bulk of growth showing up at Wal-Mart (+106%), Target (+136%), Best Buy (+196%) and Circuit City (+352%). Ebay remained the largest destination with 9.9 million unique visitors, followed by Amazon.com (8.5 million) and Wal-Mart (6.0 million).

The question is whether that traffic growth translated into more purchases as well, and if we believe Comscore than there was not linear growth, but at least some growth: The firm estimates that online retailers sold products for about $534 million, up 1% from 2007. Sales on Thanksgiving Day were $288 million, up about 6%. However, sales were down about 4% for the entire month, Comscore believes.

According to Nielsen Netratings, much of the traffic growth was focused on a few key categories – consumer electronics (+219%), toys and video games (73%), home and garden (53%) and computer hardware and software (+30%). Pricegrabber.com found that there was quite some interest in Blu-ray players (+147%) and headphones (+102%).

The most popular Black Friday product, according to Pricegrabber.com, was Nintendo’s Wii game console, followed by Ugg’s “Classic Short” boot, Sony’s BDP-S350 Blu-ray player, Samsung’s 52” LN52A650 LCD TV and the Nintendo Wii Fit accessory. Ebay said that its members sold 3171 Nintendo Wiis at an average price of $349 and 1059 Wii Fit units at an average price of $140.

However, we feel that these numbers will not be good enough to excite many analysts.

*sigh*

Dec 01, 2008 16:31     

it's people spending more with credit, and not knowing if they'll be able to pay it off later.
Dave report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

I agree w/ *sigh*

Dec 01, 2008 22:37     

Alot of people are surely still buying on credit. I'd also like to point out a few reasons I have for the decent black friday numbers. #1. I don't have any money invested. I'm young. I'm in school. I don't use credit cards. The only way I've been effected by this economic slowdown is by lower gas prices. I still make my same hourly wage. My rent is still the same. There hasn't been a spike in the cost of the general things I need to get by. If the stock market crashes and mortgages everywhere are in default, how does that affect the person who saves the lil money they have under their mattress, and rents? #2. For the past 2-3 months, we've been conditioned to think that the entire economy is going to melt down and everyone will be broke. That's how most people see this situation. So we've all been putting off spending and saving a few pennies here and there. Black Friday was a perfect excuse for those of us with self-control issues to go out and blow a lil money on ourselves and others. #3. It doesn't matter what the economic picture is...people feel like they MUST buy presents, and they do. An 8 year old isn't going to understand that Santa didn't come this x-mas because the Dow Jones is in the crapper. My family took the route of having a "thrift store x-mas". It's more for fun than anything else. We each have to try and find the best present for under $20 at a thrift store, and on x-mas day we'll get together and have a lil competition to see who got the best bang for their buck. It's cheap, fun, and there's actually some cool junk at thrift stores.

Thunderome report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

It looked about normal to me

Dec 02, 2008 06:51     

All the stores that I went to on Black Friday were slammed with customers except Circuit City and Home Depot wasn't that busy either. I heard on the news that it wasn't as it seemed because customers were mostly just buying the heavily discounted items. I bought a couple of little things and paid cash.
Stew Pidd report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

the economy will turn around soon http://www.tycr...

Mar 12, 2009 00:57     

the economy will turn around soon http://www.tycromedia.com/consumer-electronics-c-1391.html
Bill report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0