comScore closes holiday season spending discussion

comScore recognizable as a digital world leader gave the results of its holiday season retail e-commerce spending report. The period of time covered by the report is the first 42 days of the November – December 2008 holiday season. According to the reported information the money spent online this holiday season, particularly through December 12 are about the same level compared to the corresponding days last year. It is $ 19.44 billion. However, some data was sudden. Even though Cyber Monday was the heaviest part of the online shopping season with result of $ 8.26 billion totally, up 3 percent versus year ago, the most recent work week was observed during the December 8-12. This period of time saw e-commerce sales decline by a marginal 1 percent. And December 9 was considered the highest online spending day on record.

According to comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni, the company fixed very interesting comparing analyses. So after the first week of December e-commerce sales were rather strong, although after that e-commerce sales growth slowed somewhat during the most recent week. Also the chairman pointed that a few particularly spending days are to come, with sales of $887 million on Tuesday, December 9 surpassing Green Monday last year (December 10, 2007) as the heaviest online spending day on record. However, Christmas will provide busiest tome for online retailers to continue to offer enticing last-minute deals. And among them are discounts on expedited shipping. It is expected that some retailers will offer free shipping as late as December 18 this year and guarantee that the shipment will be right in time by Christmas Eve. 

The report showed that the fastest growing product categories during the period from December 1 through December 12 were Apparel & Accessories (up 21 percent), Books & Magazines (up 18 percent), and Flowers, Greetings & Gift (up 18 percent).