Cyber Monday Explodes

Another sales-monitoring organization, the National Retail Federation (“NRF”), said in November that it expected 106 million U.S. shoppers to buy holiday and other items on the Internet on Cyber Monday alone.

And Cyber Monday was only one day among several indicators of holiday-season online spending and such activities' contribution to overall Internet retailing, which saw considerable increases from Nov. 29 to Dec. 13 ' the latter so-called Green Monday ' in online shopping over people's computer and personal digital device shopping “outings” in 2009.

As of Dec. 13, according to comScore, U.S. consumers had spent nearly $13.6 billion online.

Less Can Mean More

In an apparent paradox, the lame, but, experts say, improving, U.S. economy may have pushed spending, and battered-budget consumers saved more money than they traditionally have to use for holiday spending and began buying before Black Friday. Consumers also used money (and more than they have saved before last November) for short-term purchases to shop on Cyber Monday instead of on Black Friday.

“I think the bad economic situation that the country has been dealing with for the past two or more years ' might have made consumers hold back their spending for a considerable period of time,” Tulay Girard, a professor of marketing at Penn State University who specializes in research on online retailing, says. “Retail sales have increased as consumers started making purchases earlier than the traditional start of holiday sales on Black Friday.”

Incentives from big-box and boutique merchants, such as discounts, click-and-save coupons, coupons mailed directly to consumers (online and through “snail mail”), special promotions and bonus points on buyer-club cards, also helped, Tulay adds. She stresses, though, that the boon in online spending may not last.

“Increased consumer spending may or may not continue in the future, depending on how the market forces change.”

Overall, comScore says, holiday e-commerce retail spending for the first 29 days of the traditional holiday-spending spread of Nov. 1 through the week of Christmas was up 13% over spending in the same time in 2009.

In a nutshell: The number of buyers online increased overall by 4% on Cyber Monday from 2009 to 2010, comScore estimates, and rose by about 9 million. Average spending on a single transaction for the holiday shopping period through Dec. 12 climbed 10%; while total transactions were up 6%.

Techodiversity Rises on Cyber Monday

A statement on the NRF's Web site backed up observers' theories that retailers' investments in Web sites and applications have made finding deals in particular, and shopping in general, easier for consumers than ever before.

The NRF also noted that while it expected most Cyber Monday shoppers to browse and buy from computers (89.5%, or 96 million people), the number of people saying in a survey conducted for the NRF that they would shop by using a smart phone on Cyber Monday rose sharply from 2009.

The NRF also said:

More than 7 million people (6.9% of all shoppers surveyed) would use a mobile device to shop on Cyber Monday ' twice the approximately 4 million who shopped on mobile devices in 2009 (3.8%).
Fewer people were expected to shop on Cyber Monday from work in 2010 (12.1% vs. 13.5% in 2009 ' not surprising, given the number of layoffs continuing in the nation, despite periodic small spikes in hiring, including seasonal hiring for holiday commerce).

A survey from yet another consumer-activity monitoring organization, Shop.org, released during the week of Dec. 13 estimated that 70 million Americans would shop from work at some point during the holiday season.

“Mobile shopping gives parents the opportunity to keep their children's and family members' wandering eyes away from the computer screen as they search for the perfect holiday gift,” Phil Rist, executive vice president for strategic initiatives at BIGresearch, which conducted the Shop.org survey, says. “When deciding which Cyber Monday deals to take advantage of, many shoppers will use their mobile device to comparison shop, find the best prices, or read customer reviews to help them make their final purchase.”

Despite continued high unemployment, the U.S. workplace drove Cyber Monday. The NRF said many retailers expected to see lunchtime sales and traffic spikes, but that Cyber Monday shoppers would be online throughout the day. Statistics from comScore showed that 45.4% of shoppers would cyberbuy from home ' a place designation that included students buying from computers in dormitory or other locations at universities and colleges ' with the total at-home buying total up from 41.6% in 2009.

As for from-work spending on Cyber Monday, 48.9% people surveyed said they would shop from there; in 2009, 52.9% of people shopped from work.

A survey done for the NRF showed that 44.2% of Cyber Monday shoppers said they expected to hit the Web in the early morning on that day and 37.5% in the late morning on that day. Additionally, over one-fourth of Cyber Monday shoppers (28.5%) said they would shop early in the evening.

International shopping of U.S. retail Web sites was estimated to be 5.8% of shoppers ' the same as in 2009.

Another Cybershopping Day

On Green Monday ' the second Monday in December, when online buying tends to peak (Dec. 13 in 2010) ' keyboard-rattlers spent $954 million, according to comScore, also a record. Green Monday is usually the second-highest volume online e-commerce day in the year, behind Cyber Monday.

Final statistics were unavailable by press time, but data gathered as of Dec. 13 indicate clearly that the online holiday shopping season is lengthening. For instance, while free shipping is a large draw for online shopping, it is an even more powerful magnet to mercantile Web sites for procrastinators, and this year, coalitions of online stores offered free shipping by Christmas Eve if online purchases are made by Dec. 18. In fact, retailing experts expected the third annual Free Shipping Day ' last month, the day fell on the 17th ' with more than 1,000 online sellers offering the transaction sweetener on that day alone, and many of those sellers adding that day after it had been offered earlier in the shopping season, to add millions more dollars to the take through last year's online shopping season.

e-Commerce attorney Stanley P. Jaskiewicz, a columnist for e-Commerce Law & Strategy and a member of the newsletter's Board of Editors, says that while free shipping has always played a role in consumers' online shopping behavior, it is now an option that merchants feel they must offer as more people shop online more than ever before. Merchants expect the increased activity to offset the shipping-costs freebies they offer.

“From the merchant's perspective, if several category competitors offer readily available, free shipping codes, does it have any choice but to join the crowd and eat the shipping costs as well?” Jaskiewicz, of Spector Gadon Rosen in Philadelphia, asks. “After all, the alternative would be to lose the sale entirely ' and possibly lose with it a customer's future stream of business, if [the shopper] switches to a site that gave away the shipping.”

Still, Only a Part of the Picture

Increased incentives, of course, usually mean more work ' usually welcome work ' for e-commerce counsel, who must reexamine, redraft or create terms of use, and look over, or generate, contract language for businesses offering deals and other novel selling tactics during the holiday shopping season. This work applies not only to businesses doing the selling, but also to those businesses' partners ' shipping and other logistics firms among them. Other areas of concern and work for e-commerce counsel during the holiday-shopping season include hammering out, tweaking or rewriting riders for endorsements, advertisements, e-mail and traditional-mail flyers and offers, and for rewards-program credits or other inducements, and doing the same for guidelines for special deals merchants may cook up and serve during the November through December shopping streak.

“At a minimum, clients with revenue can catch up on unpaid bills that accumulated during slow times,” Jaskiewicz says. “More positively, increasing sales give site owners the confidence to invest in Web site improvements, particularly to take advantage of the latest technological developments. Most basically, Web site development requires review of contracts, or other 'routine' representation.”

Among top legal concerns for e-commerce entrepreneurs and businesses making upgrades or other changes to their Internet storefronts is privacy.

“As we all know, however, new technological possibilities often bring legal concerns, especially when they push the envelope on such issues as privacy. Well-advised firms will explore such issues before making large commitments.”

And, Jaskiewicz adds: “From a more cynical perspective, e-commerce clients reluctant to incur legal fees after the challenges of the current economic environment may trust in their ability to make decisions themselves ' which can often lead to bigger problems, and legal fees, when counsel must help them sort out the issues.”

Penn State's Girard adds that online shopping remains one element in an overall shopping experience during the holidays, and during the rest of the year. Indeed, trips to bricks-and-mortar stores continue to rule consumers' buying habits.

It all means that sellers and e-commerce attorneys who may be involved in helping retailers increase online sales and who are paid to ensure that their clients succeed by keeping sellers on the right side of the law should keep shoppers' attitudes in mind in drafting policies, promotions and practices for their clients.

“Generally speaking, most consumers look at both online and offline (physical store) offers and deals to get the maximum value for their money,” Girard says. “Although most consumer needs overlap, consumers have different types of shopping orientations. Some consumers are variety-seekers and try different brands, whereas others are brand-loyal and adhere to the same familiar brands to reduce risk. Some are brand-conscious who buy name-brand products to enhance their self-image, whereas others are price-conscious and buy only when they have deals (e.g., coupons, discounts, special promotions, rebates, free shipping and bonus points).”

But, Girard and others say, regardless of shoppers' “type,” they are spending more money online.

Ka-ching ' all around.

Little was virtual beyond a typical conversational reference to this holiday season's once-again record-setting Cyber Monday and other online-holiday shopping excursions.

The retail-industry dubbed day for online shopping and incentives for consumers to cybershop hit the jackpot with an echoing boom Nov. 29, racking up the biggest day of online shopping in history and breaking the billion-dollar mark, with $1.028 billion spent online, according to digital-activity monitoring firm comScore.

As for whether the U.S. economy is improving, the increase in online spending on Cyber Monday over 2009 was 13%, comScore says, with a 16% increase in spending per buyer (average, $114.24 ' that rise itself is 12% over 2009's $102.19).

Another sales-monitoring organization, the National Retail Federation (“NRF”), said in November that it expected 106 million U.S. shoppers to buy holiday and other items on the Internet on Cyber Monday alone.

And Cyber Monday was only one day among several indicators of holiday-season online spending and such activities' contribution to overall Internet retailing, which saw considerable increases from Nov. 29 to Dec. 13 ' the latter so-called Green Monday ' in online shopping over people's computer and personal digital device shopping “outings” in 2009.

As of Dec. 13, according to comScore, U.S. consumers had spent nearly $13.6 billion online.

Less Can Mean More

In an apparent paradox, the lame, but, experts say, improving, U.S. economy may have pushed spending, and battered-budget consumers saved more money than they traditionally have to use for holiday spending and began buying before Black Friday. Consumers also used money (and more than they have saved before last November) for short-term purchases to shop on Cyber Monday instead of on Black Friday.

“I think the bad economic situation that the country has been dealing with for the past two or more years ' might have made consumers hold back their spending for a considerable period of time,” Tulay Girard, a professor of marketing at Penn State University who specializes in research on online retailing, says. “Retail sales have increased as consumers started making purchases earlier than the traditional start of holiday sales on Black Friday.”

Incentives from big-box and boutique merchants, such as discounts, click-and-save coupons, coupons mailed directly to consumers (online and through “snail mail”), special promotions and bonus points on buyer-club cards, also helped, Tulay adds. She stresses, though, that the boon in online spending may not last.

“Increased consumer spending may or may not continue in the future, depending on how the market forces change.”

Overall, comScore says, holiday e-commerce retail spending for the first 29 days of the traditional holiday-spending spread of Nov. 1 through the week of Christmas was up 13% over spending in the same time in 2009.

In a nutshell: The number of buyers online increased overall by 4% on Cyber Monday from 2009 to 2010, comScore estimates, and rose by about 9 million. Average spending on a single transaction for the holiday shopping period through Dec. 12 climbed 10%; while total transactions were up 6%.

Techodiversity Rises on Cyber Monday

A statement on the NRF's Web site backed up observers' theories that retailers' investments in Web sites and applications have made finding deals in particular, and shopping in general, easier for consumers than ever before.

The NRF also noted that while it expected most Cyber Monday shoppers to browse and buy from computers (89.5%, or 96 million people), the number of people saying in a survey conducted for the NRF that they would shop by using a smart phone on Cyber Monday rose sharply from 2009.

The NRF also said:

More than 7 million people (6.9% of all shoppers surveyed) would use a mobile device to shop on Cyber Monday ' twice the approximately 4 million who shopped on mobile devices in 2009 (3.8%).
Fewer people were expected to shop on Cyber Monday from work in 2010 (12.1% vs. 13.5% in 2009 ' not surprising, given the number of layoffs continuing in the nation, despite periodic small spikes in hiring, including seasonal hiring for holiday commerce).

A survey from yet another consumer-activity monitoring organization, Shop.org, released during the week of Dec. 13 estimated that 70 million Americans would shop from work at some point during the holiday season.

“Mobile shopping gives parents the opportunity to keep their children's and family members' wandering eyes away from the computer screen as they search for the perfect holiday gift,” Phil Rist, executive vice president for strategic initiatives at BIGresearch, which conducted the Shop.org survey, says. “When deciding which Cyber Monday deals to take advantage of, many shoppers will use their mobile device to comparison shop, find the best prices, or read customer reviews to help them make their final purchase.”

Despite continued high unemployment, the U.S. workplace drove Cyber Monday. The NRF said many retailers expected to see lunchtime sales and traffic spikes, but that Cyber Monday shoppers would be online throughout the day. Statistics from comScore showed that 45.4% of shoppers would cyberbuy from home ' a place designation that included students buying from computers in dormitory or other locations at universities and colleges ' with the total at-home buying total up from 41.6% in 2009.

As for from-work spending on Cyber Monday, 48.9% people surveyed said they would shop from there; in 2009, 52.9% of people shopped from work.

A survey done for the NRF showed that 44.2% of Cyber Monday shoppers said they expected to hit the Web in the early morning on that day and 37.5% in the late morning on that day. Additionally, over one-fourth of Cyber Monday shoppers (28.5%) said they would shop early in the evening.

International shopping of U.S. retail Web sites was estimated to be 5.8% of shoppers ' the same as in 2009.

Another Cybershopping Day

On Green Monday ' the second Monday in December, when online buying tends to peak (Dec. 13 in 2010) ' keyboard-rattlers spent $954 million, according to comScore, also a record. Green Monday is usually the second-highest volume online e-commerce day in the year, behind Cyber Monday.

Final statistics were unavailable by press time, but data gathered as of Dec. 13 indicate clearly that the online holiday shopping season is lengthening. For instance, while free shipping is a large draw for online shopping, it is an even more powerful magnet to mercantile Web sites for procrastinators, and this year, coalitions of online stores offered free shipping by Christmas Eve if online purchases are made by Dec. 18. In fact, retailing experts expected the third annual Free Shipping Day ' last month, the day fell on the 17th ' with more than 1,000 online sellers offering the transaction sweetener on that day alone, and many of those sellers adding that day after it had been offered earlier in the shopping season, to add millions more dollars to the take through last year's online shopping season.

e-Commerce attorney Stanley P. Jaskiewicz, a columnist for e-Commerce Law & Strategy and a member of the newsletter's Board of Editors, says that while free shipping has always played a role in consumers' online shopping behavior, it is now an option that merchants feel they must offer as more people shop online more than ever before. Merchants expect the increased activity to offset the shipping-costs freebies they offer.

“From the merchant's perspective, if several category competitors offer readily available, free shipping codes, does it have any choice but to join the crowd and eat the shipping costs as well?” Jaskiewicz, of Spector Gadon Rosen in Philadelphia, asks. “After all, the alternative would be to lose the sale entirely ' and possibly lose with it a customer's future stream of business, if [the shopper] switches to a site that gave away the shipping.”

Still, Only a Part of the Picture

Increased incentives, of course, usually mean more work ' usually welcome work ' for e-commerce counsel, who must reexamine, redraft or create terms of use, and look over, or generate, contract language for businesses offering deals and other novel selling tactics during the holiday shopping season. This work applies not only to businesses doing the selling, but also to those businesses' partners ' shipping and other logistics firms among them. Other areas of concern and work for e-commerce counsel during the holiday-shopping season include hammering out, tweaking or rewriting riders for endorsements, advertisements, e-mail and traditional-mail flyers and offers, and for rewards-program credits or other inducements, and doing the same for guidelines for special deals merchants may cook up and serve during the November through December shopping streak.

“At a minimum, clients with revenue can catch up on unpaid bills that accumulated during slow times,” Jaskiewicz says. “More positively, increasing sales give site owners the confidence to invest in Web site improvements, particularly to take advantage of the latest technological developments. Most basically, Web site development requires review of contracts, or other 'routine' representation.”

Among top legal concerns for e-commerce entrepreneurs and businesses making upgrades or other changes to their Internet storefronts is privacy.

“As we all know, however, new technological possibilities often bring legal concerns, especially when they push the envelope on such issues as privacy. Well-advised firms will explore such issues before making large commitments.”

And, Jaskiewicz adds: “From a more cynical perspective, e-commerce clients reluctant to incur legal fees after the challenges of the current economic environment may trust in their ability to make decisions themselves ' which can often lead to bigger problems, and legal fees, when counsel must help them sort out the issues.”

Penn State's Girard adds that online shopping remains one element in an overall shopping experience during the holidays, and during the rest of the year. Indeed, trips to bricks-and-mortar stores continue to rule consumers' buying habits.

It all means that sellers and e-commerce attorneys who may be involved in helping retailers increase online sales and who are paid to ensure that their clients succeed by keeping sellers on the right side of the law should keep shoppers' attitudes in mind in drafting policies, promotions and practices for their clients.

“Generally speaking, most consumers look at both online and offline (physical store) offers and deals to get the maximum value for their money,” Girard says. “Although most consumer needs overlap, consumers have different types of shopping orientations. Some consumers are variety-seekers and try different brands, whereas others are brand-loyal and adhere to the same familiar brands to reduce risk. Some are brand-conscious who buy name-brand products to enhance their self-image, whereas others are price-conscious and buy only when they have deals (e.g., coupons, discounts, special promotions, rebates, free shipping and bonus points).”

But, Girard and others say, regardless of shoppers' “type,” they are spending more money online.

Ka-ching ' all around.