Christmas Cyber Shopping Up 23% in UK

In the UK, online Christmas shopping is already well underway with traffic up 23% from October. Meanwhile purchases are moving more slowly in France and the US, with growth of 18% and 17% respectively in the last few weeks.

Results from comScore's Christmas Shopping Survey have also shown that activity in Germany is 10% down, caused in part by trade union strikes in the transport and service industries.

In the US, the first 18 days of the 'holiday season' - defined as November and December - saw more than $7b in online retail spending.

'Over the next few weeks we will see a significant increase in the frequency of shopping online, and an increase in the conversion of browsers to buyers, which ultimately means more online sales this Christmas,' predicted Bob Ivins, comScore EVP of European Markets.

ComScore is forecasting total 2007 holiday e-commerce spending of $29.5b, a 20% boost over last year's seasonal spend.

However, Nielsen was less optimistic. In its survey of nearly 1,000 shoppers, the company found that their online spending would be about the same percentage of their total holiday budgets as in 2006. The largest group, 35%, said they would spend between 25% and 50% of their shopping budget online.

'The fact that consumers expect to allocate the same share of what may be a shrinking overall holiday budget to the web, suggests that online sales growth may not live up to the 20% annual growth rates we have seen in years past,' suggested Ken Cassar, VP of Industry Solutions Analytics for Nielsen Online.

The Nielsen survey also found that convenience was the primary appeal for shopping online. More than eight in 10 respondents said the ability to shop anytime in the day was why they chose online shopping. Saving time was the next most popular reason, followed by comparison shopping and ease of sourcing. Only 46% listed low prices as a reason to shop online, and even fewer respondents, 24%, cited low shipping costs.

For the first 10 months of the year, shoppers spent $93.6b online, a 21% increase over last year, ComScore said.

Websites are www.comscore.com and www.nielsen-online.com.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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