Online Holiday Shopping Already Up By 13% in Nov. Expected $32B Sales This Season, Highest Ever
"The beginning of the online holiday shopping season has gotten off to an extremely positive start, outperforming our earlier expectations," said comScore chairman, Gian Fulgoni. "Despite continued high unemployment rates and other economic concerns, consumers seem to be more willing to open up their wallets this holiday season than last. While this early spending surge reflects, in part, heavy promotional activity on the part of retailers occurring earlier this season, it is nevertheless a very encouraging sign."
The official comScore 2009 holiday season forecast is that online retail spending for the November – December period will reach $32.4 billion, representing an 11% gain versus year ago. This strong growth rate represents an improvement compared to last season's 4% increase.
"After a year in which we already saw growth rates return to solid positive territory, the recent strength in holiday spending has led us to raise our official forecast to 11 percent from the 7 to 9 percent we were initially expecting," added Fulgoni. "We are seeing online spending surpass the totals we saw in 2007 prior to the recession and expect sales this holiday season to be the highest on record with more than $32 billion being spent during the November and December period."
1 Comments:
I am seeing the same thing in retail establishments. My local bookstore (Chapters) had a long line up at 2 in the afternoon on a Wednesday. It took me almost 10 minutes to pay for my magazine even though there were six people working the cash registers. The Starbucks line was just as long and there wasn't a seat to be had. The Apple store, in the mall across the road, was also packed with people buying Macs, phones, and accessories in droves. Even the usually slow record store had people lined up, mostly to buy DVDs.
The problem is the real estate market. Prices topped out in the summer and we are around 10-15% below our all time highs. Part of that was due to a new tax that was introduced by the idiot politicians but part of it is simply due to exhaustion. While the Canadian market has not had the same level of speculation we also have some low down payment purchases and very high debt levels for many home purchasers. Eventually this will translate to lower retail sales in the future and we could be heading into the same abyss into which we find many Americans.
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