Holiday Spending Online Will Again See Double-Digit Increases
This holiday season’s deal-seeking shoppers in the U.S. are expected to spend $68.4 billion online, representing a 15 percent increase over 2011.
“E-commerce has been on fire since its inception and it still continues to grow and outpace the overall retail economy,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst with Forrester, who studied recent trends to come up with this year’s holiday forecast. “And because e-commerce is growing so much faster, it’s taking share from the offline world. It takes more share during Q4 than the rest of the year.”
In the report, Mulpuru concluded that the number of online shoppers in the U.S. will grow a modest 3 percent, but that the average shopper will spend $419 online this holiday, a 12 percent boost over 2011.
Overall, if spending does increase 15 percent this holiday, the rate of increase will be flat compared to the prior year, but the gains are still very impressive given the much larger base (see chart below). It also points to the fact that e-commerce still makes up only a small fraction of overall retail spending.
There are three factors driving consumers to spend more online this year: