
Holiday Online Shopping Jumps 13%
NEW YORK (
) -- Online shopping played a bigger part than ever before this holiday season as free shipping proved a strong lure for many consumers and purchases surged in the week before Christmas.
According to
comScore
, $30.81 billion was spent online in the 56-day shopping period stretching from Nov. 1-Dec. 26, up 13% from $27.37 billion in the same period a year earlier.
Two areas that showed a significant spike were Dec. 17, designated as the final day to get free shipping, which saw a 61% jump in sales to $942 million from $586 million last year; and the final week of the period ended on Dec. 26, when sales leapt 17% year-over-year to $2.45 billion from $2.1 billion.
These figures reflect non-travel spending and exclude auctions and large corporate purchases.
"Online holiday spending has remained strong through Christmas and we've already seen the season totals easily surpass the levels of the past few years to set a new record for spending at almost $31 billion," said Gian Fulgoni, comScore's chairman, in a statement.
"For at least this holiday season, the American consumer has been able to shrug off the continuing economic challenges of high unemployment rates and depressed housing prices and spend at a rate that has been slightly stronger than we had expected," Fulgoni continued.
Computer hardware saw the most growth in demand from last year with sales rising 23%, fueled by purchases of handheld devices like
Apple
(AAPL) - Get Report
iPads and e-readers, and laptop computers. Other areas seeing healthy year-over-year boosts were books and magazines, up 22%, and consumer electronics, jumping 20%.
--
Written by Michael Baron in New York.
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