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Online Holiday Shopping Hits New High
There's no longer anything truly virtual about online consumer shopping.
On Nov. 23, this year's Black Friday, online retail sales tipped over the $1 billion spending brim for the first time, with consumers picking up holiday bargains topping out at $1.042 billion on the Internet, according to comScore, a digital-activity measurement company.
comScore says that's a 26% increase in online spending over Black Friday in 2011.
The company notes that Nov. 23 was the heaviest day of retail spending in 2012, with the traditionally lighter online shopping day of Thanksgiving also racking up an impressive 32% increase over Thanksgiving online spending in 2011.
Total online spending this Thanksgiving was $633 million, according to comScore.
comScore estimates that 57.3 million Americans shopped online on Black Friday ' up 18% from last year.
comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said in a press release Nov. 25 that the firm expects shopping on Cyber Monday to surpass the volume of funds spent online on Black Friday.
“Despite the frenzy of media coverage surrounding the importance of Black Friday in the brick-and-mortar world, we continue to see this shopping day become more and more prominent in the e-commerce channel ' particularly among those who prefer to avoid crowds at the stores,” Fulgoni says.
Different, But Accurate, Measures
Even though private and government sources show online spending is on the rise, along with improving in-store sales that indicate a slowly growing consumer confidence on what many analysts say is the end of the long-running Great Recession, exact numbers are hard to come by, and industry monitoring organizations' interests and biases are apparent in their reports.
Still, estimates of how many consumers shopped by what methods seem to fall in line with widespread projections.
Consider Fulgoni's comments on last month's spending.
“With Black Friday online sales up 26% and surpassing $1 billion for the first time, coupled with early reports indicating that Black Friday sales in retail stores were down 1.8%, we can now confidently call it a multi-channel marketing phenomenon,” he says in comnScore's Nov. 25 statement.
The National Retail Federation (NRF, www.nrf.com) on the other hand, notes no decline in in-store shopping, and agreed that Black Friday sales was at an all-time high, along with shoppers' visits to standing stores. The NRF calculates holiday-season spending by using a 4,005-consumer survey conducted on Black Friday and Saturday by BIGinsight, and includes in its reported numbers projections for Sunday. Over the four-day “weekend,” the NRF says, it estimates that 139.4 million adults shopped in a store or on the Internet on more than one day.
Multiple sources say a combination of aggressive print and online promotion, free delivery (including by brick-and-mortar stores trying to close the gap between their operating costs and their online competitors' operating costs), discount coupons, an increase in the number of computing devices used to shop online by consumers, an earlier start to the holiday-shopping season on the calendar with Thanksgiving falling on Nov. 22, and milder-than-usual weather in many parts of the country all played a role in this year's high spending.
Amazon Still Out Front
Again, Amazon led the pack in Black Friday online sales, with consumers visiting the retailing giant's website from work and from home, according to comScore. The next-busiest websites were operated by big-name brick-and-mortar stores with prominent and well-known Internet presences (three of them) and Apple. comScore notes that its rankings do not include auction sites, such as eBay. None of the estimates include travel or travel-related sites. comScore's rankings of the 2nd ' 5th heaviest consumer-shopping websites are Walmart, Best Buy, Target and Apple.
eBay noted increases, too, but focused in statements on its website on an uptick in use of mobile devices for the holiday shopping season. The online auction giant says transaction volume by mobile device ' phones and tablets ' was up in the United States this Black Friday by 153% over 2011, and that the company's online payment system, PayPal, experienced a nearly three-fold increase, 193%, in worldwide payments over that for 2011.
Parsing the Numbers
Categories
comScore also ranked spending by product category, and the change in spending from 2011, in the following way (the figures do not include input from auction sites or about large corporate purchases):
- Digital content and subscriptions ' up 29%;
- Toys ' up 27%;
- Consumer packaged goods ' up 23%;
- Video game consoles and accessories ' up 18%; and
- Consumer electronics ' 18%.
All Consumers
The NRF says an all-time high of 247 million shoppers flocked to stores and websites over the Black Friday weekend ' an increase of 21 million over last year. Average-per- shopper spending was $423, $25 more than the 2011 average. Total spending: an estimated $59.1 billion, according to the NRF.
Overall, the NRF says, 28% of consumers who shopped on the Black Friday weekend arrived at their spending destinations by midnight Friday; 24.4 % showed up at stores by midnight ' a minute before Black Friday began ' last year.
The NRF's survey indicates that, on average, consumers this Black Friday weekend spent $172.42 online ' about 40.7% of total weekend spending, which is up from 37.8% in 2011.
“There's no question that millions of people were drawn to retailers' aggressive online promotions this weekend, making sure to research and compare prices days in advance to ensure they were getting the best deal they could,” Pam Goodfellow, BIGinsight Consumer Insights director, says in a statement on the NRF's website. “However, with shopper traffic increasing at department, discount, and clothing stores over the weekend, it's clear that consumers still recognize Black Friday as one of the biggest shopping days of the year, as they have for decades.”
Michael Lear-Olimpi is Editor-in-Chief of this newsletter. He is also professor of communications and communications program chair at Central Penn College, in suburban Harrisburg, PA, where he is also owner of Susquehanna Editorial Services, which provides writing, editing and editorial consulting (including public-relations and article-placement) services. He can be reached at [email protected].
There's no longer anything truly virtual about online consumer shopping.
On Nov. 23, this year's Black Friday, online retail sales tipped over the $1 billion spending brim for the first time, with consumers picking up holiday bargains topping out at $1.042 billion on the Internet, according to comScore, a digital-activity measurement company.
comScore says that's a 26% increase in online spending over Black Friday in 2011.
The company notes that Nov. 23 was the heaviest day of retail spending in 2012, with the traditionally lighter online shopping day of Thanksgiving also racking up an impressive 32% increase over Thanksgiving online spending in 2011.
Total online spending this Thanksgiving was $633 million, according to comScore.
comScore estimates that 57.3 million Americans shopped online on Black Friday ' up 18% from last year.
comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said in a press release Nov. 25 that the firm expects shopping on Cyber Monday to surpass the volume of funds spent online on Black Friday.
“Despite the frenzy of media coverage surrounding the importance of Black Friday in the brick-and-mortar world, we continue to see this shopping day become more and more prominent in the e-commerce channel ' particularly among those who prefer to avoid crowds at the stores,” Fulgoni says.
Different, But Accurate, Measures
Even though private and government sources show online spending is on the rise, along with improving in-store sales that indicate a slowly growing consumer confidence on what many analysts say is the end of the long-running Great Recession, exact numbers are hard to come by, and industry monitoring organizations' interests and biases are apparent in their reports.
Still, estimates of how many consumers shopped by what methods seem to fall in line with widespread projections.
Consider Fulgoni's comments on last month's spending.
“With Black Friday online sales up 26% and surpassing $1 billion for the first time, coupled with early reports indicating that Black Friday sales in retail stores were down 1.8%, we can now confidently call it a multi-channel marketing phenomenon,” he says in comnScore's Nov. 25 statement.
The National Retail Federation (NRF, www.nrf.com) on the other hand, notes no decline in in-store shopping, and agreed that Black Friday sales was at an all-time high, along with shoppers' visits to standing stores. The NRF calculates holiday-season spending by using a 4,005-consumer survey conducted on Black Friday and Saturday by BIGinsight, and includes in its reported numbers projections for Sunday. Over the four-day “weekend,” the NRF says, it estimates that 139.4 million adults shopped in a store or on the Internet on more than one day.
Multiple sources say a combination of aggressive print and online promotion, free delivery (including by brick-and-mortar stores trying to close the gap between their operating costs and their online competitors' operating costs), discount coupons, an increase in the number of computing devices used to shop online by consumers, an earlier start to the holiday-shopping season on the calendar with Thanksgiving falling on Nov. 22, and milder-than-usual weather in many parts of the country all played a role in this year's high spending.
Amazon Still Out Front
Again, Amazon led the pack in Black Friday online sales, with consumers visiting the retailing giant's website from work and from home, according to comScore. The next-busiest websites were operated by big-name brick-and-mortar stores with prominent and well-known Internet presences (three of them) and
eBay noted increases, too, but focused in statements on its website on an uptick in use of mobile devices for the holiday shopping season. The online auction giant says transaction volume by mobile device ' phones and tablets ' was up in the United States this Black Friday by 153% over 2011, and that the company's online payment system, PayPal, experienced a nearly three-fold increase, 193%, in worldwide payments over that for 2011.
Parsing the Numbers
Categories
comScore also ranked spending by product category, and the change in spending from 2011, in the following way (the figures do not include input from auction sites or about large corporate purchases):
- Digital content and subscriptions ' up 29%;
- Toys ' up 27%;
- Consumer packaged goods ' up 23%;
- Video game consoles and accessories ' up 18%; and
- Consumer electronics ' 18%.
All Consumers
The NRF says an all-time high of 247 million shoppers flocked to stores and websites over the Black Friday weekend ' an increase of 21 million over last year. Average-per- shopper spending was $423, $25 more than the 2011 average. Total spending: an estimated $59.1 billion, according to the NRF.
Overall, the NRF says, 28% of consumers who shopped on the Black Friday weekend arrived at their spending destinations by midnight Friday; 24.4 % showed up at stores by midnight ' a minute before Black Friday began ' last year.
The NRF's survey indicates that, on average, consumers this Black Friday weekend spent $172.42 online ' about 40.7% of total weekend spending, which is up from 37.8% in 2011.
“There's no question that millions of people were drawn to retailers' aggressive online promotions this weekend, making sure to research and compare prices days in advance to ensure they were getting the best deal they could,” Pam Goodfellow, BIGinsight Consumer Insights director, says in a statement on the NRF's website. “However, with shopper traffic increasing at department, discount, and clothing stores over the weekend, it's clear that consumers still recognize Black Friday as one of the biggest shopping days of the year, as they have for decades.”
Michael Lear-Olimpi is Editor-in-Chief of this newsletter. He is also professor of communications and communications program chair at Central Penn College, in suburban Harrisburg, PA, where he is also owner of Susquehanna Editorial Services, which provides writing, editing and editorial consulting (including public-relations and article-placement) services. He can be reached at [email protected].
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