UPDATED 10:48 EDT / DECEMBER 01 2011

Groupon Sees Five-fold Increase in Holiday Deals

After its controversial IPO launch, Groupon is being more transparent with its numbers, making its first announcement on how it performed over the holiday shopping weekend that kicked off with Black Friday. Chief Executive Andrew Mason announced that the Groupon sold more than 650,000 holiday deals between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

“With more than 2 million Groupons sold worldwide, including 650,000 Grouponicus deals, a 500% increase over last year’s Grouponicus sales, our holiday season is off to a phenomenal start, reaffirming how much consumers love shopping locally,” said Aaron Cooper, Chief of Gifting, Grouponicus and author of The Gift of Chiefing.

Some of the top ranking deals that were purchased during this period are as following:

– 90,000 purchased manicures or pedicures

– 25,000 grabbed a stress-relieving massage bargain

– 9,000 bought Coz-e heated blankets with sleeves

– 7,000 bought sports equipment

On the other hand, LivingSocial, owned by Amazon, sold approximately 350,000 deals between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which isn’t bad at all.  Taking a look at other big sales during holiday season, Microsoft boasts its biggest sales week in Xbox history, and says that it sold almost 1 million consoles last week.  According to the Official Microsoft Blog, more than 960,000 units sold during the week of Black Friday.

Here are some of the sales highlights from Microsoft sales:

– Xbox 360 sold more than 960,000 consoles in the U.S. alone, with more than 800,000 sold within a period of 24 hours

–  More than 750,000 Kinect for Xbox 360 sensors were sold in the U.S.–standalone and bundled.

It seems that madness of Black Friday and Cyber Monday has crossed into the cyber zone as comScore reported that online sales were up to $816 million, making it the largest online spending day to date.  Online sales on this year’s Black Friday increased by 26% compared to last year.  Amazon also revealed that this year’s Black Friday Kindle sales are the best they’ve had so far.  Though actual numbers weren’t given, Amazon stated that since its release, the Kindle Fire remains their top selling device in the Kindle family.

Besides web shoppers, we saw some nice trends for mobile shoppers as well. According to Zippycart, 70 percent of people who own tablets will use their devices to make purchases through e-commerce solutions.  The smartphone is an especially important tool for customers to find products, read reviews and redeem coupons.  A consumer can find store locations, and see how long it will take them to get there.  In fact, Accenture says 43 percent of holiday shoppers are likely to use their mobile device to check if they can find a cheaper deal during in-store shopping.  These multichannel shoppers are expected to grow by 22 percent this year alone.


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