Online sales wrap up the holiday season with cheer, comScore says
While the 2002 holiday season hit the skids for offline retail, it brought the online world much to cheer about. Non-travel e-commerce sales for the week before Christmas hit $1.4 billion, up 18% year-to-year, comScore Networks reports. For the shopping season between Nov. 1 and Dec. 20, non-travel online sales reached $8.5 billion, up 23% over the same period last year, comScore reports.
The holiday season’s growth puts fourth-quarter online non-travel sales on a track to hit close to $14 billion, even though growth rates slowed a bit in the final weeks before Christmas, says Michelle David Adams, vice president of comScore. "Overall fourth-quarter growth rates are impressive and sales are on track to come within close range of comScore’s original fourth-quarter non-travel forecast of $13.8 billion," she said.
In contrast, offline sales disappointed many retailers. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., for example, reported on Dec. 26 that, despite a surge in store sales in the last few days leading to Christmas – including two days each with more than $1 billion in sales – the increase was too late for it to reach its initial sales plan for the five-week period ending Jan. 3. Based on sales through Christmas Eve, it said its revised estimate for that period for stores open at least a year was 2-3%, down from in its initial estimate of 3-5%.
ComScore said home-and-garden products ranked as the fast-growing major merchandise category online this holiday season, reaching $555 million, up 78% over last year. Other online growth categories included furniture and appliances at $171 million, up 75%; and toys at $396 million, up 61%.
In terms of the value of overall online merchandise sales, the largest category was computer hardware at $1.63 billion, down 1% from last year.
Other online merchandise categories, with sales and rate of change:
-- Apparel & Accessories:
$1.455 billion, +31%;
-- Consumer Electronics:
$1.027 billion. +21%;
-- Office:
$576 million, -18%;
-- Books:
$397 million, +8%;
-- Event Tickets:
$250 million, +16%;
-- Sport & Fitness:
$233 million, +54%;
-- Jewelry & Watches:
$216 million, +45%.
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