For the holiday season to date, more than $21.95 billion has been spent by US consumers online, marking a 12% increase compared to the corresponding days last year, according to new data from comScore.
Online Holiday Spending Reaches Almost $22B
Between November 1 and December 10, 2010, US shoppers spent slightly more than $21.95 billion online, 12% more than the almost $19.7 billion they spent online during the same period last year. In addition, the most recent week (ending Dec. 10) reached $5.15 billion in online spending, an increase of 11% compared to the $4.6 billion spent online during the corresponding week last year, as two individual days each surpassed $900 million.
Online spending showed healthy growth rates during the traditionally high-volume days of Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 25, up 28%) Black Friday (Nov. 26, up 9%) and Cyber Monday (Nov. 29, up 16%).
Green Monday Looks Promising
“Green Monday,” the second Monday in December, in recent years has tended to be the heaviest (or among the heaviest) online spending days of the year. comScore analysis of the past five holiday shopping seasons reveals that “Green Monday” has had very high spending levels each year, ranking as the top spending day of the season on two occasions (2005 and 2007), and the second-heaviest spending day on two other occasions (2006 and 2008).
In 2009, Green Monday was only the fifth-heaviest day of the season, with the following Tuesday, December 15 ranking as the heaviest with $913 billion in spending.
“We anticipate that Green Monday this year will be another strong day for online buying, leading off what will be the heaviest spending week of the season,” said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni.
“However, with Free Shipping Day occurring on Friday, December 17, it is likely that buying will get distributed more evenly across the week rather than concentrated so heavily in the early days of the week. As a result, several days in the upcoming week are candidates to the heaviest online spending day of the year. It’s also apparent that as consumers become more confident in the reliability of expedited shipping that they are willing to buy online later in the season.”
2010 Has 6 of 10 Heaviest Holiday Online Shopping Days
Since comScore began tracking e-commerce spending in 2001, it has recorded five individual shopping days eclipse $900 million in spending. To date, Cyber Monday 2010 (Nov. 29) is the only billion dollar spending day on record, followed by Monday, December 6, 2010 with $943 million and Tuesday, December 15, 2009 with $913 million. Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2010 ($911 million) and Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2010 ($901 million) round out the top five, with Thursday, Dec. 9, 2010 ($898 million) coming in a close sixth.
Of the ten heaviest online spending days on record, most have occurred during the early part of the work week with four occurring on Mondays, three on Tuesdays, and two on Wednesdays.
Free Shipping Grows Dramatically
Recent comScore analysis of the share of e-commerce transactions that included free shipping suggests that the promotion has accelerated in importance in 2010, with three recent weeks seeing more than 50% of all transactions include this incentive.
The week ending Sunday, November 28, 2010 showed a peak free shipping rate of 55.1%. This was 23% higher than the 44.8% free shipping rate recorded during the week ending November 7, 2010, which marked the first week of the 2010 holiday shopping season as tracked by comScore.
In addition, the 55.1% rate was 21% higher than the rate of 45.6% recorded during the corresponding week in 2009. The week ending December 5, 2010 also showed a significant increase from the same week last year, growing 17% from 43.8% to 51.4%.
