The online retail sales kept its momentum for the week ended December 16 by recording 15 percent growth over the year-ago period driven by Green Monday and free shipping day on Friday. On both the occasions, the online retail sales crossed $1 billion mark indicating the shoppers' preference. This is the third continuous week to witness significant growth in the holiday season. For the cumulative period from November 1 to December 16 too, the retail sales sector grew 15 percent.
Green Monday term was coined by eBay in 2007 to identify the Monday coming around the second week of December. The latest reports on online retail sales come on the heels of a slightly disappointing November retail sales data from the U.S. Commerce Department, though Wells Fargo analysts maintained that holiday sales remain on track.
The optimism indicated by analysts Mark Vitner and Tim Quinlan stems from the fact that core retail sales, which measure sales excluding gasoline stations, building materials and motor vehicle dealers, offer a solid indication, of how personal consumption expenditures are witnessing an increase.
46-Days Online Sales
The online retail sales recorded a growth of 15% to post sales of $30.94 billion for the 46-days period ended December 16 from $26.91 billion in the previous year period. comScore data indicated. Cyber Monday continues to be the single largest day sales, while Thanksgiving weekend recorded online sales of $1.03 billion, up from $886 million in the previous year period. The e-commerce sector sales registered an upside of 15% to $6.32 billion for the week ended December 16 from $5.51 billion in the year-ago period.
While Green Monday recorded sales of $1.13 billion with 19 percent growth thereby threatening to surpass Cyber Monday sales numbers, Free Shipping day on December 16 witnessed an upside of 14 percent to post sales of $1.07 billion.
Commenting on the retail sales, comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni said, "More than $1 billion in spending on Free Shipping Day put the exclamation point on what will almost certainly be the heaviest week of the online holiday shopping season," He added, "This season has seen a continuation of the trend where an increasing percentage of transactions involve free shipping, as more consumers demand it and more retailers provide it. During the week of Thanksgiving and Cyber Week we saw at least 3 in 5 transactions use free shipping, significantly higher rates than we've ever previously observed."
The market research company's data also pointed out that four individual days surpassed $1 billion in spending during the week and felt that retail sector attained crescendo for this season and that spending could witness a slow down as Christmas nears leaving Cyber Monday as the top ranked shopping day for the second consecutive year.
Interestingly, the market research company believes that based on its analysis of retail spending trends, they come to conclusion that holiday deals like discounts and free shipping may have been frontloaded during the earlier portion of the season. The trend also clearly indicated that Monday s and Friday accounted for significant sales upside.
Analysts Take
Wells Fargo analysts Mark Vitner and Tim Quinlan believes that core retail sales could grow 6.0 percent pace during the fourth quarter, which means real personal consumption should at least, match third quarter's 2.3 percent growth rate even if there is modest sales rise in December. Significantly, core retail sale rose 0.2 percent in November; the major gains generated from the previous two months leave the level of retail sales above third quarter average.
But the analysts felt that another month of small gain in December would set the stage for much slower upside during the first half of 2012 in view of the sluggish recent reported income growth.
iStock Punch
The final push for the retail segment has come to take the most from the available limited holiday period to shore up their year numbers. Though there is a concern about lower income group opening their purse, there is a belief that time has come for them to open their wallet as otherwise they may have to wait for some more time to get any promotional offers.