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RAPAPORT... U.S. online retail sales for the Christmas season, from November 1 to December 31, rose 15 percent year on year to $53.3 billion, according to comScore Inc. Cyber Monday, December 1, ranked as the heaviest online spending day of the year with more than $2 billion in desktop buying, the company stated. “The 2014 online holiday shopping season was very strong overall as spending slightly exceeded our fairly optimistic forecast heading into the season,” said comScore's chairman emeritus, Gian Fulgoni. “Despite a shortened holiday calendar between Thanksgiving and Christmas and erroneous reports of flagging holiday sales, the U.S. consumer proved resilient and flexed their spending muscle online this year. Increasing positive consumer sentiment, improving job growth and declining gas prices all combined to create a more favorable spending environment, and consumers responded by opening up their wallets in a way they hadn’t since before the financial crisis. In the end, we saw growth rates in the mid-double digits as the online channel continued to gain meaningful share from brick-and-mortar.” In addition to Cyber Monday, December 2 ranked as the second highest spending day of the season at $1.796 billion, followed by Green Monday (December 8) with $1.615 billion and Black Friday (November 28) with $1.505 billion.
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