E-Commerce Spending Flat For “Black Friday” (AMZN)(EBAY)(WMT)(TGT)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 27, 8:42PM EDT · Published Nov 30, 1:21PM EST

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Angrybear Some figures picked up in the media from research house ShopperTrak showed retail sales on Black Friday up 3%, which was much better than the most gloomy forecasts. The level of consumer spending may not stay high, but it is an indication that the holiday may not be a complete washout for a retail industry which was already on the ropes.

For the last several years, e-commerce holiday sales have grown faster than in-store revenues. That trend may be coming to an end.

The latest numbers from comScore show that Black Friday online revenue was up a measly 1% this year, to $534 million.

For the holidays so far, beginning on November 1, e-commerce revenue is now off 4% to $10.4 billion.

If would be an odd reversal for futures if bricks-and-mortar stores showed better gains this year than online "stores" did.

The stock market may be anticipating just such a turnabout in fortunes. Over the last three months, shares of Wal-Mart (WMT) are off less than 5%. Shares of Target (TGT) are off 35%. But, the stock prices of Amazon (AMZN) and Ebay (EBAY) have both fallen almost 50% for the period.

Shopping online may have lost its charm, especially in a poor economy. At least in a store a shopper can bargain with the sales person. In a recession, this is pretty important.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.