2009 Us Online Holiday Season's Sales Show Positive Growth

By Author: James Foster
Total Articles: 23
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The year 2009 ended with a positive note showing a clear growth trend in the online retail sales for the holiday season of the year. US online holiday season sales improved by a solid 5% when compared to the corresponding period last year, according to comScore report. Online sales reached to $27,121 million from 1st November to 24th December, 2009. During the same period last year, consumers spent only $25,845 million online with a drop of 3%.

Green Tuesday is the Heaviest Online Spending Day of 2009
The Tuesday after the Green Monday gave a pleasant surprise clocking $913 million of total online sales, claiming the only day to have crossed $900 million. However, Green Monday (14th December) was disappointing with a negative growth of 1% when compared to 2008. Green Tuesday's sales grew by a remarkable 21% when compared to the previous year's online sales of $754 million. The two days following the Tuesday (15th December) also marked a considerable increase in sales when compared to previous year.

According to the industry experts, 17th December is the usual last day of offering free shipping for ...
... Christmas shopping by many online retailers. Holding until the last minute deals, online buyers did brisk purchasing in the last three days of the deals to grab the opportunity. This peculiar behavior by online shoppers resulted in some surprises in the sales value of the days following Green Monday.

2009 Top 10 Online Spending Days Vs 2008 Top 10 Online Spending Days
The top 10 online spending days in 2009 were 15th December, 30th November (Thanks Giving Day), 1st, 16th, 14th, 10th, 8th, 17th, 3rd and 2nd of December respectively. Top nine individual days out of top ten days collected more than $800 millions each. Unlike last year's comparable period where all the top ten days belongs to December, this year's 30th November found a slot among the highest online spending days of the season. The total sales for 2009's top ten online spending days reached $8,509 millions when compared to $8,056 millions of 2008 increasing by 5.62%.

Free Shipping Emerged as a Key Factor of Online Purchasing This Season
ComScore's data reveals that free shipping grew as an important driver of online shopping throughout the 2009 holiday season. Online shoppers intentionally waited until they get free shipping offer from the retailers to purchase online. The volume of shopping that included free shipping increased considerably when compared to 2008's holiday season.

Many factors contributed to the growth of this year's online holiday sales. The major reasons include increasing consumer confidence, heavy snowfall, deep discounting, aggressive marketing activity, and overall positive cues from the economy. According to industry experts, the coming quarters are crucial to judge whether the optimism is temporary confining to only the holiday season or can continue in 2010 further recovering from the recession.

Marvist is an Internet advertising agency providing Internet marketing services to help companies to increase online sales and improve their profitability. Marvist was founded in 2005 and has been rapidly growing since then and has clients now in 11 countries including USA, Canada, UK, Spain, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.