comScore Sees US Online Shopping Flat versus Last Year
comScore is forecasting flat US online shopping during the holiday season, which would require a pickup from the 4-percent decline to $8.2 billion estimated for the first three weeks of November.
With consumer confidence low and disposable income tight, the first weeks of November have been very disappointing, with online retail spending declining versus year ago. It’s also likely that some budget-conscious consumers are planning to wait to buy until later in the season to take advantage of retailers’ even more aggressive discounting.
comScore’s forecast is that holiday online retail spending for the November – December period will be flat versus year ago at $29.2 billion, significantly lower than last year’s growth rate of 19 percent and below the retail e-commerce growth rate of 9 percent that has been observed for 2008 year-to-date.
Alongside its reporting of behaviorally monitored e-commerce spending, comScore is also conducting weekly surveys of approximately 500 consumers to determine attitudes and sentiment in regard to the holiday shopping season.
In the most recent survey, conducted between Friday, November 21 and Monday, November 24, 33 percent of consumers said they had not even begun their holiday shopping yet. They also indicated they intended to cut back on holiday spending in several ways, most notably by buying fewer gifts (47 percent of respondents) and buying less expensive gifts (46 percent of respondents). Respondents also said they planned to employ the Internet to help cut costs, by taking advantage of free shipping and/or no sales tax (39 percent).
A recent survey by Deloitte indicated that more consumers plan to spend at least part of their holiday budgets on the Internet. Online retailing will continue to grow this holiday season, with a record 71 percent of consumers planning to do some online shopping, according to Deloitte’s 23rd Annual Holiday Survey of retail spending and trends. This figure is up 5 percentage points from 2004.
More than one in five consumers (21 percent) surveyed plan to shop primarily or entirely online this holiday season (up from 19 percent last year), and almost one-quarter (24 percent) of total dollars are expected to be spent on the Internet, compared with 22 percent last year and only 19 percent in 2004.
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