{"id":27295,"date":"2012-11-26T12:45:51","date_gmt":"2012-11-26T10:45:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=27295"},"modified":"2015-01-23T17:06:51","modified_gmt":"2015-01-23T15:06:51","slug":"black-fridays-billion-dollar-online-boom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/27295\/black-fridays-billion-dollar-online-boom\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Friday reaches online milestone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>America&#8217;s Black Friday online\u00a0shopping hit a new spending high, raking in 12% of what South Africa makes online in a year &#8211; in one day.<\/p>\n<p>New data from internet tech tracking company, ComScore, has revealed that Americans spent over $1 billion in online shopping on Black Friday (23 November 2012).<\/p>\n<p>This is a significant increase from online spending on the same day last year (2011), when e-commerce racked up a total of $816 million in sales.<\/p>\n<p>Black Friday online sales were up 26% compared to reports of retail sales, down 1.8%, ComScore said.<\/p>\n<p>For the holiday season, to-date, $13.7 billion has been spent online, according to ComScore, marking a 16% increase versus the corresponding days last year.<\/p>\n<p>Of the $13.7 billion spent, $1.042 billion was spent on Black Friday &#8211; a 7.6% chunk of the total online spend.<\/p>\n<p>With an estimated total of $59.1 billion spent on the day, according to the National Retail Federation, it&#8217;s clear retail still ruled the day, however.<\/p>\n<p>57.3 million Americans visited online retail sites on Black Friday, according to ComScore &#8211; representing an increase of 18% versus year ago. This out \u00a0of a total of\u00a0247 million shoppers \u00a0tracked by the National Retail Federation.<\/p>\n<p>Amazon ranked as the most visited online retail site on Black Friday while also posting the highest year-over-year visitor growth rate among the top five retailers.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Digital Content &amp; Subscriptions is leading the way as the top-growing online retail product category (up 29% versus year ago) as the rapid adoption of smartphones, tablets and e-readers continues to drive demand for digital books, audio and video content,&#8221; ComScore said.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UTrFWcuA-m0\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">What&#8217;s in a billion?<\/h3>\n<p>While the USA and South Africa&#8217;s online economies are not directly comparible &#8211; a side-by-side look puts the Black Friday craze into a more sober perspective.<\/p>\n<p>E-commerce is a rapidly growing platform in South Africa, showing growth at a rate of almost 30% annually, according to data from World Wide Worx in May (2012).<\/p>\n<p>According to World Wide Worx, South Africa&#8217;s Internet economy currently contributes 2% to the country&#8217;s GDP, and is forecast to reach 2.5% by 2016.<\/p>\n<p>In monetary terms, that means that, currently, South Africa&#8217;s e-commerce environment is currently contributing approximately $8.15 billion to the GDP*.<\/p>\n<p>In comparative terms, this means that Americans spent 12.8% of South Africa&#8217;s total annual online spend in one day &#8211; and surpassed it by $5.5 billion in one month.<\/p>\n<p>A few South African retailers and online retailers also jumped on the &#8220;Black Friday&#8221; bandwagon, with DionWired, Incredible Connection, Takealot and Esquire all running specials on the day.<\/p>\n<p>Demand for the sales on Takealot was so great that the e-retailer struggled to cope with the very high load on its website, causing lengthy downtime.<\/p>\n<p><small>* South Africa GDP = $408.16 billion (2011, World Bank).<\/small><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Related articles<\/h3>\n<p><a title=\"Takealot Black Friday woes\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/65396-takealot-black-friday-woes.html\"><strong>Takealot Black Friday woes<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"SA online economy at 2.5% of GDP by 2016\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/13871\/sa-online-economy-at-2-5-of-gdp-by-2016\/\"><strong>SA online economy at 2.5% of GDP by 2016<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"SA online economy at R103bn by 2016\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/general\/13866\/sa-online-economy-at-r103bn-by-2016\/\"><strong>SA online economy at R103bn by 2016<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"BusinessTech Article\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/general\/12018\/africas-biggest-gdp-players-compared\/\"><strong>Africa\u2019s biggest GDP players compared<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"SA Internet stats for 2011 revealed\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/49533-sa-internet-stats-for-2011-revealed.html\"><strong>SA Internet stats for 2011 revealed<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>America&#8217;s Black Friday shopping has hit a new online spending high, raking in 12% of what South Africa makes online in a year &#8211; in one day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":27297,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9882],"tags":[657,4688,2065,2720,26,853,3314,607],"class_list":["post-27295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-amazon","tag-black-friday","tag-e-commerce","tag-gdp","tag-headline","tag-south-africa","tag-takealot","tag-world-wide-worx"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27295"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78207,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27295\/revisions\/78207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}