Online shopping is up, and so are online prices
Online sales and discounts are getting harder to find this holiday season but some are still there if you look carefully according to this New York Times story (registration required):
According to an annual survey that Lehman Brothers conducted in August, prices for merchandise sold online rose 6 percent this year, compared with an increase of 0.8 percent last year. Prices were essentially unchanged for merchandise sold in brick-and-mortar stores. The survey, which has been conducted since 1999, compares prices at online sites, including shipping charges, with prices at traditional stores in New York City. It looks at more than 100 products, from toothpaste to videocassette recorders.
...Over the three-day Thanksgiving shopping weekend, consumers spent $453.4 million online, excluding spending on travel, a 67 percent gain over the period last year, according to a report by comScore Media Metrix, which measures buying from a cross section of 1.5 million Internet users. E-commerce continued to gather momentum on the Monday after Thanksgiving, with sales totaling $231.5 million, up 37 percent from the corresponding day last year. "Black Monday," as that day is known in the retail industry, is the busiest online shopping day of the year, because it is the first day back at work, where many people do their online buying.