US Christmas retail spending surpasses USD 22 Billion
According to the latest figures from comScore, e-commerce spending for the first 44 days of the November – December 2007 Christmas season (November 1 – December 14) showed more than USD 22 billion has been spent online during the season-to-date, marking an 18 pct gain versus the corresponding days last year. Monday, December 10 reached USD 881 million in sales (up 33 pct versus last year), registering as the heaviest online spending day of the season and the heaviest online spending day on record. However they expect things to hot up this week.
“Despite the strong surge in spending we observed at the beginning of last week, with both Monday and Tuesday easily surpassing USD 800 million in sales and showing very strong growth rates, the remainder of the week saw more modest spending,” said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni. “However, we anticipate that spending at the beginning of this week will again be strong with most free shipping deals available until Tuesday, December 18.”
While the US seems to be calming down certain sites in the UK seem to be going into meltdown. We went to the Argos site to check on our order of IR presents at just after 2pm this afternoon and there was so much traffic it had defaulted to a message that basically said “we are experiencing heavy traffic please ring, email, text or visit the store.” Although the Monday lunchtime news featured a quite empty looking Argos packing centre, perhaps the news spurred on a whole new set of orders. Could this be the solution? Get a web cam in your packing centre and just loop a slow time in the warehouse video and “bingo” extra sales.
