First-half online sales growth keeps up its torrid rate
The numbers and the magnitude differed, but the conclusions are the same: E-retailing is taking off again.
BizRate.com Inc. and comScore Networks Inc. both reported first half online retail sales numbers this week, with differing methodologies resulting in different numbers.
BizRate reports that online sales for the first half totaled $23.52 billion, up 46% from $16.13 billion in the first half of last year. Consumers placed 189.24 million orders online in the first half, up 39% from 135.68 million last year.
Second quarter online retail sales rocketed 51% ahead of last year’s second quarter, BizRate reports. Sales in the second quarter reached $11.92 billion, up from $7.91 billion in second quarter 2001. Consumers placed 97.77 million orders in the second quarter, up 45% from 67.39 million in Q2 last year.
“This is double hump growth,” says Chuck Davis, CEO of BizRate. “Very rarely do you see an industry with massive growth, a maturation, then re-acceleration.”
BizRate is projecting that online sales will grow 45% this year over last, bringing this year’s total online sales to $51.98 billion from $35.87 billion last year. 2001’s growth was 24% over 2000, while 2000’s growth was about 100% over 1999.
“People like the convenience of buying online and when something is this convenient, it grows,” Davis says. “Like the ATM and pay-at-the-pump gasoline, it’s becoming a way of life.”
BizRate derives its numbers from monitoring traffic at 2,000 retail sites where it has contracts and by filling in from published reports of sales and traffic at sites it does not monitor.
ComScore reports that online shopping in the first half of 2002 reached $19.8 billion, up 29% from the first half of 2001. Travel spending grew 71% to $14.8 billion, comScore reports.
The top selling category in the first half was computer hardware, with sales of $4.66 billion, up 45% from the first half of 2001, according to comScore. Other top-selling categories were:
--office supplies, $3.22 billion, up 51%
--apparel and accessories, $2.55 billion, up 3%
--consumer electronics, $1.46 billion, up 7%
--event tickets, $1.25 billion, up 68%.
Total travel and non-travel spending was $34.6 billion, up 44% over a year ago.
ComScore derives its numbers by tracking the purchases of a cross-section of 1.5 million consumers who have given comScore permission to monitor their online behavior.
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