Forrester Research Inc. has revised its online shopping index, one of the most widely quoted reports of online spending activity, for 2000. Forrester is now reporting that consumers spent $42.4 billion in online retail and travel spending in 2000, down 15% from its previous estimate of $48.3 billion.
Forrester revised its numbers as the year-end 2001 numbers came in showing a decline in shopping from 2000. Forrester says total online spending in 2001 reached $47.6 billion, up 12% from the previous year’s new number but down 1.4% from 2000’s old number. The declines that Forrester has been reporting for the last few months were at odds with the increases that other research organizations were reporting.
Forrester reports that December online spending reached $5.7 billion, up 16% from November’s $4.9 billion and 14% from December 2000’s revised figure of $5 billion. Forrester had previously reported that consumers spent $6.1 billion online in December 2000.
Forrester bases its monthly number on a survey of 5,000 online shoppers drawn from a panel developed by Greenfield Online. Forrester conducts the survey in the first nine business days of each month and asks consumers to recall their online purchases in the previous month.
"We realized we had overestimated the number of shoppers that had been projected in the latter part of 2000. Once the 2000 sales figures were amended, it supported our previous analysis that online sales were up from last year," said Christopher M. Kelley, analyst at Forrester.
Forrester also had reported that not counting travel, consumers spent $36.9 billion online in 2000. But that number was significantly different from the Commerce Department’s report of $27.3 billion. The Commerce Department bases its report of online sales on a survey of 12,000 merchants. Forrester is not reporting the breakdown between travel spending and other online spending.
Forrester also reports that the number of households shopping online increased to 18.7 million in December, from 16.8 million in November. Consumers spent an average of $304 per person in December, compared with $293 in November, according to the index.
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