Black Friday Sales Disappoint

By Johns Wu on Dec 02, 2006

The data published on November 25 showed that eBay was the online winner this �Black Friday�. However, overall Internet traffic growth was well below last year�s, even as bargain?hunters tracked down much-adored toys and electronics on the Web before �Cyber Monday.�

According to the online audience measurement firm, overall traffic to the Nielsen/Net Ratings Holiday eShopping Index rose 12% on November 24 after Thanksgiving over the same day last year. That is drastically below the 29% growth in the overall traffic to the index from 2004 to 2005 but in accordance with 11% growth seen from 2003 to 2004.

The data shows that eBay had the most Web traffic on �Black Friday� with 7.5 million unique visitors. Amazon.com grabbed the second place with 3.4 million unique visitors, followed by Wal-Mart Stores with 3.2 million visitors. Much of that online traffic in advance of �Cyber Monday� was dedicated to the search for Mattel�s T.M.X. Elmo, the most popular and hard-to?find toy of this season. The eBay reported sale of 2,537 T.M.X. Elmos on November 24 for an average price of $70.10. The toy retails at Wal-Mart for $39.97 and as much as $150 on Shopping.com.

Other popular items on eBay included Sony�s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo (7974.OS) Wii. About 14,675 Sony PlayStation 3 have been sold on eBay for an average price of $1,186.39 from November 17 to November 24. Nintendo was introduced on November 19, and since then, 26,708 have been sold for an average price of $412.53.

Shopping.com and PriceGrabber.com, which allow consumers to compare deals from a variety of retailers, have witnessed year-over-year jumps of 40% and 45% respectively in the volume of traffic on their sites. However, traffic does not necessarily means higher sales. As shipping becomes faster and more reliable, more Internet shoppers are waiting for December to make purchases, and are browsing the Web for good deals.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 2nd, 2006 at 12:40 am and is filed under Market News. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

2 Responses to “Black Friday Sales Disappoint”

By pythagoruz on December 3rd, 2006 at 10:47 am

Hey Johns,
On EBAY, I have been fundamentally bullish on the stock for the last month or so and was also excited about the chart until black friday. They seem to be showing the most growth yoy in the online retail sector yet the stock is probably the worst performer. After breaking out of an ascending triangle at 33.50 a few weeks ago it reversed on black friday and has suffered ever since. Any thoughts on the stock’s weakness? There were a few recent posts on my blog about EBAY if you are interested. I enjoy your blog keep up the good work.
-pythagoruz

By Anthony Sumner on January 4th, 2008 at 2:15 pm

It’s obvious to see that ebay is the number 1 black friday shop. I absolutely hate ebay. I used to sell clothes. People want things for 50% below wholesale. Does that sound crazy? Well sell something, and you’ll see. That’s the reason why there’s so much counterfeiting. People demand $600 Coach bags for $150. But besides that, the holiday spirit and the holiday pocket is decreasing. People are not spending as much anymore. It’s due to them not having the money. There’s no trickier here. It’s easy to see why ebay was hot. Wizetrade didn’t even have to show me that.

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