Retail

Are Online Holiday Sales Up Enough?

For the season to date, $48.3 billion has been spent online in the United States, according to comScore, a leader in measuring sales in the digital world. Its holiday online sales report tracks the spending from desktop computers for the first 51 days of the November-December 2014 season, and it showed a 15% increase from the same period in the previous year.

During the week of December 15 to 21, there was 18% growth in online sales, which translates to $5.8 billion in desktop spending. In the last full week before Christmas, the first two days recorded over $1 billion each, while Free Shipping Day (December 18) had $926 million in desktop spending.

A few notable days from the report with corresponding numbers:

  • Thanksgiving Day recorded an increase of 32% to $1.01 billion.
  • Black Friday recorded an increase of 26% to $1.51 billion.
  • Cyber Monday recorded an increase of 17% to $2.04 billion.
  • Most Recent Weekend (December 20 to 21) recorded an increase of 36% to $972 million.

comScore Chairman Emeritus Gian Fulgoni said:

This final week of online holiday shopping before Christmas was very strong, finishing off the season on a high note and virtually guaranteeing e-commerce spending will outperform our pre-season forecast. We are now running at a 15% growth rate in desktop e-commerce for the season, which should be taken as a very positive sign for the economic health of both the American consumer and the e-commerce channel as a whole. While the heaviest spending days of the season are now behind us, there is still about another $5 billion that will be spent over the balance of the year that will get us to new all-time highs for e-commerce.

Looking over the course of the years, there is a definite positive trend in online spending as time goes on.

ALSO READ: Walmart’s Last-Minute Christmas Specials

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