Weekly Holiday Internet Retail Sales Up 16%

The most recent week for holiday Internet sales, ended Dec. 25, saw a 16 percent increase in spending, year-over-year, to $2.8 billion, according to comScore, a company that measures digital data and provides digital business analytics.

The figure is an expected steep drop from the record-breaking $6.28 billion for the prior week, ended December 18, the last week where delivery of online orders could be guaranteed.

Retail e-commerce spending for the first 56 days of the November – December 2011 holiday season reached a record $35.3 billion, marking a 15-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year. This increase has been consistent throughout the holiday season.

“Holiday e-commerce spending has remained strong throughout the season,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “We can now say with certainty that the $1.25 billion spent on Cyber Monday will rank it as the heaviest online spending day of the season for the second consecutive year, but we should also note that it was accompanied by nine other billion dollar spending days this year.”

The Reston, Va.-based company noted that over the past several years there has been a dramatic increase in Christmas Day purchases of digital content and subscriptions, a retail category that includes digital downloads of music, TV, movies, e-books and apps. As many consumers get new smartphones, tablets, e-readers and digital content gift certificates for Christmas, they spend Christmas Day loading up their devices with new content.

On an average day during the 2011 holiday season to date, digital content and subscriptions accounted for 2.8 percent of retail e-commerce sales, but on Christmas Day the category accounted for more than 20 percent of sales. Consistent with past years, comScore expects sales for this category of products to remain elevated throughout the entire week following Christmas Day.

Another $5.9 Billion Dollar Week for Online Holiday Sales

For the second consecutive week, online sales hit the $5.9 billion mark and saw growth rates remain in line with the season-to-date at 15-percent, reports comScore, which measures digital data.

In addition, the most recent week (ending December 9) had three days surpassing $1 billion in sales, the Reston, Va.-based company reports. For the holiday season-to-date, six individual days have surpassed the billion dollar threshold, led by Cyber Monday at $1.25 billion.

“These highlights represent another very positive sign for the holiday shopping season, said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. The week following ‘Cyber Week’ (which includes Cyber Monday the Monday after Black Friday) often experiences relative softness in spending momentum due to retailers pulling back on their promotional activity. As we enter what will be the heaviest week of the season for online retailers … all signs are now pointing to a strong finish to the season.”

This season has been a coming out of sorts for online retail. Since comScore began tracking e-commerce spending in 2001, seven individual shopping days have surpassed $1 billion in spending. Six of those days occurred this year. To date, Cyber Monday 2011 (Nov. 28) ranks as the heaviest online spending day in history at $1.25 billion. Leading off this most recent week of the holiday season, December 5, now ranks as the second heaviest spending day in history at $1.18 billion, followed by November 29 at $1.12 billion, and December 6 at $1.11 billion. Cyber Monday 2010 (Monday, November 29, 2010) rounds out the top five at $1.03 billion.

Retail e-commerce spending for the first 39 days of the November – December 2011 holiday season has reached $24.6 billion, a 15-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year.

Record Setting Cyber Monday

Cyber Monday reached $1.25 billion in online spending in the U.S., up 22 percent year-over-year, representing the heaviest online spending day in history and the second day on record to surpass the billion-dollar threshold, according to comScore, a firm that specializes in measuring digital data.

“Cyber Monday was yet another historic day for e-commerce,” said Gian Fulgoni, comScore chairman. “While last year saw Cyber Monday rank as the heaviest online spending day of the year for the first time ever, it will be interesting to watch the next couple of weeks to see if any future individual days in 2011 manage to leapfrog this year’s highest day-to-date.”

Cyber Monday’s sales growth was driven by an increase in both the number of buyers (up 11 percent) and the average spending per buyer (up 9 percent), the Reston, Va.-based firm said. Overall, 10 million people bought online on Cyber Monday, representing the first time on record that threshold has been reached in a single day. The average online buyer conducted 1.9 online transactions on Cyber Monday for a total of nearly $125 in spending.

Half of dollars spent online at U.S. Web sites originated from work computers, up slightly from last year, comScore reported. Buying from home comprised the majority of the remaining share (43.2 percent) while buying at U.S. Web sites from international locations accounted for 6.6 percent of sales.

For the first 28 days of the holiday season (November 1 – 28), $15 billion has been spent online, a 15-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year.

Cyber Monday is a marketing term for the Monday immediately following Black Friday. Shop.org, an association of multi-channel retailers was the first to use the term in 2005 after retailers discovered that online sales increased on that particular day. In 2006, Shop.org launched the CyberMonday.com portal, a one-stop shop for Cyber Monday deals. Cyber Monday is now one of the biggest online shopping days of the year.

Q1 Online Retail Sales Up 12%

Rising gas prices and high unemployment have led to a 12 percent increase in online retail spending to $38 billion for the first quarter of 2011, according to comScore, which measures digital data. It’s the sixth consecutive quarter of positive year-over-year growth and second consecutive quarter of double-digit growth rates.

“Domestic retail e-commerce built on the success of a strong 2010 holiday season with another encouraging quarter here in the first three months of the year,” said Gian Fulgoni, chairman of the Reston, Va.-based company. “Faced with rapidly rising gas prices and stubbornly high unemployment, consumers continued to take advantage of the Internet’s lower prices by shifting their spending from offline retail stores. In fact, in the first quarter, the growth in e-commerce spending was roughly double that observed at offline retail. While we would expect online buying to dampen slightly if gas prices continue to eat into discretionary spending, it’s clear that e-commerce has become a mainstay in consumer behavior, driven by the attraction of both lower prices and convenience.”

Other first quarter highlights include:

* Video Games, Consoles & Accessories; Books & Magazines; Computers/Peripherals/PDAs; Consumer Electronics; and Computer Software (excl. PC Games) were among the top-performing online product categories. Each of the categories grew at least 13 percent in the first quarter.

* The top 25 online retailers accounted for 67.7 percent of dollars spent online, the same percentage as last year, and down from a peak of 70 percent in 2010 as small and mid-sized retailers regain lost market share.

* The 12-percent growth in the quarter was a function of an increase in number of buyers (up 7 percent) and transactions per buyer (up 9 percent), but accompanied by a slight decline in dollars per transaction (down 4 percent).

Congress Pours Coal Over An Otherwise Merry Christmas Season for Online Retailers

Retail e-commerce spending for the 2012 holiday season grew by 14 percent, year-over-year, to $42.3 billion, according to comScore, which measures digital data. However, the Reston, Va.-based firm said sales growth did not meet expectations and blamed the ‘fiscal cliff’ debate for causing consumers to be cautious spenders during the latter half of the season.

For the third year in a row, CyberMonday, the Monday after Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 26 this year), was the heaviest online holiday spending day at $1.46 billion. The latter portion of the season saw several days with particularly strong growth, according to comScore, including Free Shipping Day (Dec. 17), up 76 percent to $1.01 billion and Christmas Day, up 36 percent to $288 million.

However, these performances on individual days could not make up for the spending growth shortfall earlier in December, the Reston,Va.-based firm said. The holiday season started off well but a December swoon in consumer confidence gave way to softer than expected buying during the critical shopping weeks in early to mid-December. Gian Fulgoni, comScore chairman, said the company expected a growth rate of 16 percent and total sales to be at $43.4 billion, more than a billion dollars greater than the final tally.

“This year’s growth rate is essentially on a par with last year’s,” Fulgoni said. “Consumers almost immediately pulled back on spending, apparently due to concerns over the looming ‘fiscal cliff’ and what that might mean for their household budgets in 2013. With Congress deadlocked throughout December, growth rates softened even further and never quite made up enough ground to reach our original expectation.”

The firm defines the holiday season as November and December (nine weeks this year). Looking at the totals on a weekly basis, it shows that sales growth in November ranged from 15 to 17 percent, year-over-year. Sales growth then fell to 11 percent for the week following Thanksgiving and dropped to 1 percent during the last week of the season, with one major exception. The week that ended just before Christmas Day (week eight) saw a 53 percent increase in sales. ComScore said that the highly variable growth rates in the final two weeks (extremely high in the penultimate week and extremely low in the final week) are primarily a function of the way the calendar fell in relation to Christmas.

“While it is typical to see growth rates subside slightly during the week after Thanksgiving, the amplified and sustained lull this year came as something of a surprise,” Fulgoni said. “You might say that had it not been for Congress, every other indicator suggested it would have been an even merrier Christmas for online retailers.”


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Consumers Spent a Record-Breaking $43.4 Billion Online in Q4 2010

Online retail spending reached a record $43.4 billion for the fourth quarter of 2010, up 11 percent versus year ago, according to digital measurement company, comScore. This growth rate represented the fifth consecutive quarter of positive year-over-year growth and second quarter of double-digit growth rates in the past year.

“Holiday season spending was bolstered by an improving sentiment among some consumer segments and by retailers’ discounting and promotions,” said Gian Fulgoni, comScore chairman. “The 2010 holiday season saw the first billion-dollar day on record and several more surpassing $900 million to help propel Q4 to record spending levels. We anticipate that the progress we’ve seen in the past year as we climbed out of the recession will continue with sustained double-digit growth rates in 2011.

Other highlights from Q4 2010 include:

* The top-performing online product categories were Computer Software (excl. PC Games), Consumer Electronics, Books & Magazines (excl. digital downloads), Computers/Peripherals/PDAs, and Toys & Hobbies. Each of the aforementioned categories grew at least 15 percent in Q4 2010 vs. year ago.

* The top 25 online retailers accounted for 68.4 percent of dollars spent online, up 5.6 percentage points vs. year ago. However, this percentage represented a decline from Q3 2010, during which the top 25 retailers accounted for 69.9 percent of dollars, an indication that small and mid-sized retailers are also rebounding from the recession, comScore said.

* A total of 84 percent of U.S. Internet users conducted an online transaction in Q4 2010, up from 78 percent last year. The average buyer spent about the same amount online during the most recent quarter as they did last year.