E-commerce Spend for Holiday 2014 Slightly Better than Expected

(IDEX Online News) – Online spending for the November-December 2014 holiday was up 15 percent compared to holiday 2013, according to just-released research from digital measurement and analytics company comScore. Shoppers spent $53.3 billion overall during the period.

Living up to its name, Cyber Monday (December 1) saw the most online activity with $2 billion in desktop buying.

The day after Cyber Monday ranked second for the season at $1.796 billion, followed by Green Monday (December 8) with $1.615 billion and Black Friday with $1.505 billion.

For the entire season, 15 individual days exceeded $1 billion in online spending via desktop, a significant increase from 10 in 2013.

“Despite a shortened holiday calendar between Thanksgiving and Christmas and erroneous reports of flagging holiday sales, the American consumer proved resilient and flexed their spending muscle online this year,” said comScore chairman emeritus Gian Fulgoni.

“Increasing positive consumer sentiment, improving job growth and declining gas prices all combined to create a more favorable spending environment, and consumers responded by opening up their wallets in a way they hadn't since before the financial crisis. In the end, we saw growth rates in the mid-double digits as the online channel continued to gain meaningful share from brick-and-mortar.”