Online Holiday Spending Hits $16 Billion So Far

Online spending hit $16 billion for the first 36 days of the holiday shopping season, a 3% increase over the same period last year, according to comScore.

For the week ending Dec. 6, spending hit $4.6 billion, heavier than any individual spending week in 2008 but still below two individual weeks in 2007. The week began with strong weekday spending, led by $887 million on Cyber Monday, but ended on with negative year-over-year growth rates during the weekend.

“We are anticipating heavy spending for the current week,” said Gian Fulgoni, comScore chairman, in a statement. “Hopefully, we’ll see a return to the growth rates we observed during the earlier part of this past week and that the weekend softness was just a temporary hiccup.”

Are customers happy with their online experiences? Yes, but they’re not exactly jumping with joy. Customer satisfaction with retail Web sites for the week following Thanksgiving held steady through Cyber Monday, according to ForeSee Results’ weekly holiday benchmark. However, the satisfaction score is actually 3% lower than at the same time last year.

“Retailers hoping for a healthy rebound after last year’s discouraging holiday season may be in for another letdown,” said Larry Freed, president and CEO of Foresee Results, in a release, citing comScore’s recent spending figures. “For an industry accustomed to double digit increases in revenue year over year, this is disappointing. With satisfaction lower than it was last year, it is going to be a challenge for online retail spending to exceed the 4% growth currently being reported.”

And what is influencing what and from where consumers buy? For more and more shoppers, social media. Twenty-eight percent of respondents who have begun their holiday shopping indicated social media had an impact on what they bought.

Reading a consumer-written product review was the most common source cited (13%), followed by an expert review (11%); 7% followed a fan page on Facebook for deals and offers, while 6% said a Facebook friend’s status update referring to a product influenced their shopping.
As for Twitter, 5% said they followed a company’s tweets for deals, while 3% said a friend’s tweets guided their purchase patterns.