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.

$45 Billion Spent on Black Friday, Jewelry Sales Up 2.6%

Approximately 212 million shoppers visited stores and websites over Black Friday weekend, up from 195 million last year, according to the National Retail Federation. People also spent more, with the average shopper this weekend spending $365.34, up from last year’s $343.31. Total spending reached an estimated $45 billion.

“While Black Friday weekend is not always an indicator of holiday season performance, retailers should be encouraged that a focus on value and discretionary gifts has shoppers in the spirit to spend,” said Matthew Shay, NRF president and CEO. “As retailers look ahead to the first few weeks of December, it will be important for them to keep momentum going with savings and incentives that holiday shoppers simply can’t pass up.”

According to the survey conducted over the weekend by BIGresearch, the number of people who began their Black Friday shopping at midnight tripled this year from 3.3 percent last year to 9.5 percent in 2010. By 4 a.m., 24 percent of Black Friday shoppers were already at the stores. Thanksgiving Day openings have also been a boon to the industry, as the number of people who shop on Thanksgiving—online and in stores—has doubled over the past five years, from 10.3 million in 2005 to 22.3 million in 2010.

The number of people who purchased jewelry over the weekend rose substantially, from 11.7 percent last year to 14.3 percent this year. In addition, more people purchased gift cards, toys and books and electronic entertainment than a year ago.

“It’s certainly encouraging to see an increase in traffic and sales from the four-day holiday weekend, however, consumers still have concerns about the economy, jobs, and paying down debt,” said Phil Rist, EVP, BIGresearch.  “It was the consumers’ search for deals and bargains that drove the weekend traffic rather than their confidence in the economy.”

While shoppers seemed focused on getting good deals, items of strong value seemed to win out over the absolute lowest prices, according to the survey. Both department stores (52% this year vs. 49.4% last year) and clothing stores (24.4% vs. 22.9%) saw healthy increases in traffic, while the percentage of people who shopped at discounters declined from 43.2 percent last year to 40.3 percent this year. The percentage of people who shopped online this weekend rose 5.1 percent, from 28.5 percent last year to 33.6 percent this year – a strong sign heading into Cyber Monday, a marketing term created by Shop.org, a subsidiary of NRF, for the Monday immediately following Black Friday for online shoppers.

The survey, conducted Nov. 25-27, polled 4,306 consumers and has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.5 percent.

Black Friday Online Sales Total $816 Million, Cyber Monday Next

Black Friday saw $816 million in online sales, making it the heaviest online spending day to date in 2011 and representing a 26-percent increase versus Black Friday 2010, according to ComScore, a firm that measures digital data. Thanksgiving Day (November 24), while traditionally a lighter day for online holiday spending, achieved a strong 18-percent increase to $479 million.

Overall U.S. retail e-commerce spending for the first 25 days of the November – December 2011 holiday season, totaled $12.7 billion, a 15-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year.

“Despite some analysts’ predictions that the flurry of brick-and-mortar retailers opening their doors early for Black Friday would pull dollars from online retail, we still saw a banner day for e-commerce,” said comScore chairman, Gian Fulgoni. “With brick-and-mortar retail also reporting strong gains on Black Friday, it’s clear that the heavy promotional activity had a positive impact on both channels.

Now the attention turns to Cyber Monday (tomorrow), a marketing term created in 2005 by online retailers after learning that online shopping activity increased the Monday following Black Friday. ComScore says 80 percent of retailers are having special online promotions that day. Last year sales exceeded $1 billion and it expects to see that figure shattered.

As the online channel increasingly influences offline-shopping behavior, consumers turned to Black Friday sites on the web to conduct research in advance of the day’s events, the Reston, Va.-based firm said. Bfads.net led the pack with 3.9 million unique visitors from November 21 to 25, up 51 percent versus last year, comScore said.

Fifty million Americans visited online retail sites on Black Friday, representing an increase of 35 percent versus year ago, comScore said. Each of the top five retail sites achieved double-digit gains in visitors vs. last year, led by Amazon. Walmart ranked second, followed by Best Buy, Target and Apple.

“It is telling that the top multi-channel retailers also showed strong growth in visitors, demonstrating the importance of the online channel to the retail industry as a whole,” Fulgoni said.

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).