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E-shopping sites boom before Christmas
Tuesday, November 27 2001
by Matthew Clark


While the US economy officially entered into recession, on-line retailers have
reported surprisingly high pre-Christmas sales in the past week. 

Without disclosing specific sales figures, Amazon.com said it sold around 12,000
more items per hour than it did at the same time a year ago.  Amazon also said
that almost twice as many users have set up wish lists on its site than last
year. Meanwhile, Kmart's on-line venture, BlueLight.com, said that its sales were
up 45 percent from the Thanksgiving weekend in the US last year.



In fact, according to new figures from Nielsen//NetRatings, 22 percent more
Internet users shopped the day after Thanksgiving compared with the normal Monday
through Thursday average. Nielsen said that Amazon had 1.7 million daily unique
visitors the day after Thanksgiving, often called "black Friday," up from 1.3
million visitors on the Friday a week earlier. The tracking firm also said that
Wal-Mart's Web site more than doubled its visitors to 355,000 on the day after
Thanksgiving.



Further evidence of what may be a mini-boom to on-line sales for the holiday
season came from Victoria's Secret, the women's lingerie and clothes retailer
which puts on a fashion show at this time each year. During the week ending on 18
November its Web site reached 423,000 unique visitors, compared with 212,000
visitors the previous week, according to Nielsen. 



All of these seemingly positive signs came as the Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
and Harris Interactive released the results of a survey which claimed that
roughly 37 percent of on-line consumers are expressing confidence that the
holiday shopping season will be a strong one and plan to spend more as a result.




That survey said that the number of confident e-shoppers is more than double the
number of on-line buyers who claim to be worried by the current economic outlook.
Additionally, those who are reported to be concerned, had experienced a layoff or
seen family members lose their job. 



Nevertheless, 48 percent of US consumers fall somewhere in the middle between
concerned and optimistic about the e-economy.  But the survey estimated that
over 109 million people are expected to purchase goods or services via the Web
this year in the US alone and more than 56 percent of those surveyed plan to
spend the same as or more than they did last year.



A variety of theories has emerged regarding why the slight boom in e-commece
transactions is occurring in the midst of an ever bleaker economy. Some analysts
simply suggest that the Internet, as a medium for purchasing goods, still has
room to grow and is doing so. Others say that with air travel and travel in
general down, many consumers are looking for ways to deliver gifts that in
previous years would have been hand-delivered. Still, other industry watchers say
that many shoppers are resisting heading out to the malls and shopping centres
due to the gloom that is persisting following the 11 September attacks. 



But the research firms have already predicted big numbers for the holiday season
with Gartner claiming that e-shopping sales will hit USD11.86 billion in North
America this holiday season and more than USD25 billion worldwide. Last year,
e-commerce holiday sales hit USD9.1 billion, according to Gartner. 



With some irony, the US National Bureau of Economic Research announced Monday
that the US officially entered a recession in March 2001. However that news
seemed to do little to dampen the spirits of investors in e-commerce firms on
Wall Street.



On Monday, the Nasdaq composite index rose 38.03 to 1,941.23. Amazon.com shares
gained USD3.13, or 34 percent, to USD12.21 on Monday while Yahoo gained USD2.34,
or 15 percent, to USD18.07.