US retail ecommerce holiday sales (excluding travel) will reach $54.5 billion in 2012, up 16.8% over 2011, marking the fourth straight year of strong growth after online holiday sales plummeted in 2008 amidst the Great Recession. Mobile shopping and online deal hunting will be major contributors to holiday ecommerce success this year. Smartphone and tablet shoppers together will generate more than 20% of total online holiday sales. Price-conscious consumers who have learned to time their online purchases around retailers’ big promotions will shop during peak sales periods early and late in the holiday season—effectively stretching the shopping calendar from Halloween to after Christmas. Consumers have also honed their cross-channel shopping skills. Last holiday season, nearly two-thirds of online consumers researched online before making an in-store purchase. This trend will be even more pronounced in 2012, as in-store shoppers armed with smartphones do online research while standing before considered products.
Related Research
A Comprehensive Study of European E-commerce; DIBS E-Commerce Survey 2012 provides extensive insights on e-commerce in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, UK, Germany, France, Poland and Spain.
The channel shift to online appears to be accelerating: online sales increased by +15% this quarter, while on a comparable category basis, offline sales increased only 2%. Mobile commerce accounted for 10% of all retail e-commerce sales in Q3.
US shoppers once again took advantage of early promotions this holiday season, driving a 17.4 percent increase in online sales Thanksgiving Day. This increase set the stage for 20.7 percent growth on Black Friday.
It’s no secret that shoppers all over the world are embracing e-commerce.
