U.S. Online Holiday Sales Up 12% So Far
December 09, 10On four different days of the past week, online spending was in excess of $800 million, led by Cyber Monday, which became the heaviest online spending day on record at $1.028 billion.
Tuesday, November 30 reached $911 million, making it the third heaviest online spending day on record, with Wednesday ($868 million) and Thursday ($850 million) also reaching high levels, although growth rates for the season subsided in the latter half of the week and through the weekend.
According to comScore, one of the most prevalent promotions used by retailers during the holiday season to drive e-commerce purchasing has been free shipping. An analysis of the share of e-commerce transactions that included free shipping suggests that the promotion has accelerated in importance in 2010 with each of the most recent three weeks seeing more than 50 percent of all transactions include this incentive.
“Without a doubt, free shipping has become a critical driver of e-commerce purchasing, with the majority of consumers indicating that they will abandon their shopping carts if they get to check-out and find that free shipping is not included,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni.
“Retailers have increasingly responded to this consumer demand, with market leaders Amazon and Walmart, for example, both offering free shipping on virtually all transactions this season. Importantly for retailers, transactions with free shipping run an average of 30 percent higher in basket value than those without, hopefully helping to offset some of the margin compression that can occur with such attractive incentives,” he added.