Online holiday spending up 12 percent

Today is “Green Monday,” and we could see one of the heaviest online spending days this year. So says comScore, Reston, Va., which also has reported holiday season retail e-commerce spending for the first 40 days of the November – December 2010 holiday season was almost $22 billion. This is a 12 percent increase compared to the same priod last year. The most recent week (ending Dec. 10) reached $5.15 billion in spending, an increase of 11 percent versus the corresponding week last year, as two individual days each surpassed $900 million.

As for Green Monday – a term eBay coined in 2007 to describe the Monday occurring around the second week of December – this has tended to be the heaviest (or among the heaviest) online spending days of the year. An analysis of the past five holiday shopping seasons reveals that Green Monday has had very high spending levels each year, ranking as the top spending day of the season on two occasions (2005 and 2007), and the second heaviest spending day on two other occasions (2006 and 2008).

Interestingly, last year Green Monday was only the fifth heaviest day of the season, with the following Tuesday (Dec. 15) ranking as the heaviest with $913 in spending.

According tocomScore, Thanksgiving Day online spending this year was up 28 percent over last year. Black Friday spending rose 9 percent, and Cyber Monday online spending jumped 16 percent, all compared to last year.

“Growth rates during the most recent week settled in at around 11 percent,” says comScore chairman GianFulgoni, “consistent with our forecasted spending growth rate for the holiday season.”

Fulgoni adds that, with more than $5 billion in spending this past week, “it’s clear that while deal-seeking shoppers may have driven stronger than anticipated spending early in the season, Americans continue to demonstrate a significantly greater willingness to spend online this year than in seasons past.”

This week, he says, “should see some of the heaviest online shopping activity of the season and we expect at least one more day to surpass the billion dollar spending threshold.”

He goes on to note with Free Shipping Day occurring on Friday, “it is likely that buying will get distributed more evenly across the week rather than concentrated so heavily in the early days of the week.”

As a result, several days this week “are candidates to the heaviest online spending day of the year. It’s also apparent that as consumers become more confident in the reliability of expedited shipping that they are willing to buy online later in the season.”

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