For the November – December 2008 holiday season-to-date, $12.03 billion has been spent online (excluding travel), marking a 2 percent decline versus the corresponding days last year, according to the digital tracking firm comScore. However, Cyber Monday saw $846 million in online spending, up 15 percent.

The four-day period from Black Friday through Cyber Monday saw e-commerce spending jump 13 percent as both weekend days and Monday all achieved double-digit gains, the Reston, Va.-based firm said.

“Mark Twain might have said: ‘Rumors of the death of online holiday shopping have been greatly exaggerated’,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni “Consumers are clearly responding positively to retailers’ aggressive online discounts. With Cyber Monday promotions beginning in earnest over the Thanksgiving weekend, consumers have finally begun to open their wallets, setting off a streak of four consecutive days of extremely strong growth … This is an extremely encouraging development for retailers and we can but hope that their aggressive discounting has still left room for profits.”

The most recent comScore holiday retail survey, conducted from Nov. 28-Dec. 1, revealed that some additional insights into consumers view of the 2008 holiday shopping season. Some of the survey findings include:

* More than half (51 percent) of consumers indicated that the level of promotions and discounts is higher this year than last year, while only 12 percent said that there appeared to be fewer, suggesting that retailers are having to be more aggressive in discounting to spur consumer spending.

* Nearly 40 percent of consumers said that there seemed to be fewer people out shopping in retail stores this year than last year, while only 7 percent thought there were more.

ComScore forecasts holiday spending to reach $29.2 billion, the same as in 2007.

JCK