eCommerce

Retailers who promoted their online presence as a way to avoid the crowds this past weekend were rewarded for their efforts with record sales on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday.

All those flat screens televisions sticking out of shopping carts in the aisles of Target stores early Friday morning were no optical illusion.

Casey Carl is Target’s new president of multichannel with responsibility for the retailer’s website. In his new role, Carl will oversee Target’s digital platforms including mobile, social and Target.com and also will retain his prior responsibilities as SVP merchandising for entertainment, toys, sporting goods and electronics.

New York City -- Online sales on Cyber Monday were up mid-afternoon by 15% from a year ago, according to IBM Benchmark.

In other mid-afternoon results, IBM reported:

• The number of consumers using a mobile device to visit a retailer's site is 12.4%.
• The number of consumers using their mobile device to make a purchase is at 7.37%; and
• iPhone continues to lead all mobile device traffic at 4.88%, followed by Android at 3.9% and iPad at 3.26%.

New York City -- Five state leaders in India made clear over the weekend their unwillingness to let foreign retailers set up shop in the country, the Associated Press reported.

Parliament adjourned Monday in an uproar over the issue and Communist Party-controlled trade unions have pledged to strike Thursday, the report said, and some politicians even threatened to burn down foreign stores that open under the new rules.

Beaumont, Texas -- Conn’s announced that it completed a $20 million expansion, to $450 million, of its revolving credit facility, which expires in July 2015. The company received a commitment from one new lender and received an increased commitment from one of the existing participants in the bank group.

Holiday shoppers were hunting for big screen televisions, LeapFrogs, Angry Birds and anything with an “i” in its name this weekend, according to an analysis of online search behavior conducted by the price comparison website PriceGrabber.com.

According to the firm’s Holiday Dashboard Report, as of Friday morning the top searched Black Friday products included items in some of the most frequently promoted categories such as electronics and toys. The top searched products, according to PriceGrabber, included the following:

Armonk, N.Y. -- U.S. shoppers took advantage of early sales this holiday driving a 39.3% increase in online Thanksgiving day spending while setting the stage for 24.3% online growth on Black Friday compared with the same period last year, according to the fourth annual IBM Coremetrics Black Friday Benchmark study, which tracks more than a million transactions a day, analyzing terabytes of raw data from 500 retailers nationwide.

New York City -- E-commerce spending jumped 26% on Black Friday, according to comscore.

Black Friday web sales totaled $816 million, up from $648 million last year, comScore reported.

“With brick-and-mortar retail also reporting strong gains on Black Friday, it's clear that the heavy promotional activity had a positive impact on both channels," said Gian Fulgoni, chairman, comScore.

New York City -- Retail sales broke records during the Thanksgiving weekend, climbing 16%, according to a survey by BIGresearch for the National Retail Federation.  Shoppers spent $52.4 billion, up from $45 billion last year.

A record 225 million shoppers visited stores and malls over the Black Friday weekend, up from 212 million last year. Shoppers on average spent $398.62, up from $365.34 last year, the NRF said.