Mercent Corporation today released an analysis of their retail client’s year over year (2007 to 2008) sales growth numbers for Cyber Monday and the seven days prior. Mercent reported that its retailer’s comparison shopping and online marketplace sales were up 29.3% for Cyber Monday, and 25.6% for the previous 7 days.
For the 2007 base year Mercent excluded all retailers that launched on their platform, Mercent Retail, after Q3 2007. The growth numbers do take into account expanded distribution from new channels that the merchant may have adopted during the year. This is probably a good thing, as I’ve seen a big swing among given shopping channels in the last year, i.e. the rise of Google Product Search, the continued growth in Amazon and the relative softness in some other comparison shopping engines.
A few of the client’s on Mercent’s platform are: Nordstrom, REI, 1-800Flowers, GUESS, SmartBargains, Levenger, Car Toys among others.
What do you think? Does it makes sence that given the economy that more online shoppers are looking to the comparison shopping engines for deals? Will these channels continue to grow in the face of flat or year-over-year retail comp store declines? We’ll see… but numbers like these are encouraging for retail performance marketers.