Senior Internet Research Analyst Sandeep Aggarwal of Collins Stewart, an independent investment banking group, recently hosted a conference call with Gian Fulgoni, Executive Chairman and cofounder of ComScore Inc., to discuss the online holiday season trends for ecommerce and Internet advertising.
Aggarwal reported that, as more people go online to research a product before buying it (either online or off-line) and do a lot more comparison shopping, the ratio of traffic to actual transactions completed (conversion rate) went down for most retailers.
ComScore expects a flat holiday season for ecommerce and forecasts total online retail spend to reach $29.2bn on equivalent days basis (down 3% to 4% Y/Y on calendar days basis). Among the Top 10 online retailers, only three saw a year-over-year (Y/Y) growth of web traffic, while among the Top 20, almost half saw an increase.
Income matters this year. ComScore survey data showed that the biggest push in online spending during the first week of December came from households earning more than $100k. This segment increased their Y/Y online spending 21% compared to only 2% increase for the $50k-$100k segment and negative 3% for the less than $50k segment. The $100k+ segment also accounted for 39% of the total online spend vs. 42% for the $50k-$100k segment and 18% for the less than $50k segment.
