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%.
Back...
