Cyber Monday: How quaint! The idea that U.S. retail would rely on a whole
separate day to push online retail over brick-and-mortar retail seems crazy in
this day and age. Businesses like Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT ) and Best Buy (NYSE: BBY
) now treat Black Friday and Cyber Monday less as individual events and more
like attraction points of a larger season (not unlike the gift-giving holidays
that birthed them). Shoppers spent a record $52.4 billion on Black Friday this
year, up 16.4% from 2010, but those numbers reflect spending in stores, online
and earnings from promotions that ran across the weekend. People already are
spending, so how much of an impact could little ol Cyber Monday have? Pretty
big, as it turns out. IBM Coremetrics reported Tuesday morning that consumers
spent 29% more online Monday than they did online this Black Friday, with the
average online order coming to $198.26 up from $193.24 in 2010. ComScore on
Wednesday said sales came to a whopping $1.25 billion on Monday, good for
year-over-year growth of 22% and an all-time high since the National Retail
Federation named the day in 2005. But not all companies celebrate Cyber Monday
the same way. Which companies walked away from Cyber Monday looking like
champions? Take a look. Biggest Winner: eBay eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY ), the online
auction website, pushed attractive deals on Cyber Monday like Apple (NASDAQ:
AAPL ) iPads marked down by $50, which sold out in less than two hours . Sales
through eBay werent the only profit driver for the company on Cyber Monday,
though. Payment service and eBay subsidiary PayPal saw massive traffic from
customers shopping online. Mobile traffic through PayPal alone was up 552% from
2010 and up 17% from Black Friday. EBAY stock also has enjoyed a holiday boost
of almost 5% from last weeks close. Runner-Up: Amazon Surprise, surprise. The
king of online retail continued its winning streak from Black Friday . Even
before Cyber Monday proved to be a record-earning day for online retailers,
Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN ) shares jumped 6% on Monday, mostly on anticipation of big
sales. While Amazon itself hasnt announced a tally for Cyber Monday just yet,
the numerous retailers that sell goods through Amazons partner program are
reporting significant growth over 2010. For instance, Amazon partner eBags
reported Cyber Monday sales up 105% year-over-year . Honorable Mention:
Microsoft Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT ) has been having a strong holiday all around
thanks to the profitability of its entertainment segment. The company sold just
less than 1 million Xbox 360 game consoles in the week leading up to Cyber
Monday, which, including sales of the Kinect motion control device, should
equate to around $300 million in total Xbox sales. The Xbox 360 also was a hot
item for Cyber Monday, with major deals promoted through Amazon and others ,
meaning that $300 million figure is likely to grow by a significant margin.
Microsoft shares were up 4% from Friday as of this writing. Biggest Loser:
Groupon How far and fast the mighty fall. This time last year, the daily deals
business looked like the future of electronic commerce, and Groupon (NASDAQ:
GRPN ) was poised to be the Amazon of the market. Instead, the company has seen
its business model copied by everyone on the web, and GRPNs public offering has
been one of the biggest IPO duds of 2011 . Groupon did almost nothing in terms
of Cyber Monday promotion, as opposed to major competitor LivingSocial, which
gave away gift cards to major retail partners. However, Groupon did damage
control Wednesday, saying it sold 650,000 holiday deals on Cyber Monday , 500%
more than in 2010. (In comparison, LivingSocial was projected to be around
350,000.) GRPN shares were up 7% by Wednesdays end, but the gains merely put the
company flat for the week at around $17.30 far from the $31 it was trading at
in early November, and still under its IPO pricing. As of this writing, Anthony
John Agnello did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned stocks. Follow
him on Twitter at
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