Cyber Monday Sales at Record as Amazon, EBay Win Shoppers

Cyber Monday sales surged, sending online shopping toward a single-day record as Amazon and EBay siphoned consumers from brick-and-mortar stores.

Web sales on Dec 2 rose 21 percent from 2012, International Business Machines (IBM) said. Retailers catering to smartphone and tablet users benefited the most, with mobile traffic accounting for 32 percent of site visits, a 45 percent gain from a year earlier. E-commerce is projected to be the bright spot of an otherwise tepid holiday season marked by the first Black Friday-weekend spending decline since 2009. While Internet sales may climb as much as 15 percent, more than three times faster than overall retail growth, they still account for just 14 percent of the total, according to the National Retail Federation. “The results thus far from an e-commerce perspective have been very strong -- certainly strong relative to brick-and-mortar stores,” said Ron Josey, an analyst at JMP Securities. “This is the first holiday season where mobile is absolutely having its mark on overall retail sales, whether that’s from a smartphone or a tablet. It’s not going away.”