US Internet Sales Rise 24% on Year up to Nov. 24
December 01, 13
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The firm said that November 19 had seen the most online sales during the period in review, with $963 million.
The company's vice president of marketing and insights, Andrew Lipsman, said, “The heaviest online spending day, thus far, fell just shy of $1 billion in sales and though we’ve not yet reached that benchmark we can expect to see that spending threshold eclipsed numerous times during the post-Thanksgiving period. Black Friday and Cyber Monday can both be expected to easily surpass that total, with Cyber Monday already beginning to point toward $2 billion.”
The monitoring firm forecasts that sales for all of the Christmas holiday season – November 1 to December 29 – will show a 14-percent increase on the year to $48.1 billion. And online retail sales will receive a significant boost from sales from a mobile device which are seen accounting for a further $7.1 billion in sales.
“While the early part of the online holiday shopping season has been solid so far, we are tempering our expectations given the shortened 26-day shopping period between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year,” added Lipsman. “In addition, with [the Jewish festival of] Hannukah beginning in November this year there is some spending that has been pulled forward and likely added a boost to the early November shopping period.
"That said, our forecast of 14 percent growth for desktop-based buying still represents a strong outlook versus last year that highlights the continued channel shift to online. We also expect mobile-device commerce spending growth to contribute about 2 percentage points to that growth rate, meaning that total digital commerce will grow at a rate of nearly 16 percent.”