Online shoppers have spent $37.8 billion from their desktop computers for the first 45 days of the November-December 2013 holiday season, according to comScore, which said strong weekends helped online spending exceed expectations.
For the first time ever, the most recent workweek saw five individual days eclipse $1 billion in spending, the research firm revealed, led by Green Monday with $1.4 billion. The week before (December 2-6) fell short of that accomplishment when Friday, December 6 missed the $1 billion milestone by just $16 million. Cyber Monday remains the number one shopping day at $1.735 billion. Altogether there have been ten individual $1 billion days this season.
Total spending since Thanksgiving has been $19.2 billion, up a healthy 21-percent vs. the same period following Thanksgiving last year. (Note that this year Thanksgiving fell 6 days later than last year.)
ComScore noted a new trend this year. Where typically Monday through Fridays tend to be the heaviest online spending days of the week, this year, “exceptionally strong year-over-year growth rates of at least 30 percent have been seen on each weekend since Thanksgiving, while gains on the weekdays have been between 10-16 percent.”
“One of the most interesting stories we are seeing this holiday season is the explosion in weekend online spending,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “While we have seen solid growth during the days between Monday and Friday, weekend growth rates have surged to nearly 4x what we’re seeing during the work weeks.”
The trend toward weekend shopping can partly be attributed to showroomers, with many consumers now “touching and feeling” products in-store before completing their transactions online, according to Fulgoni.
