Thursday, October 2, 2003

Guy Cook,

Just how much are consumers spending online? Billions. The third
quarter of 2003 produced online retail sales of $12.43 billion, a 24%
increase over the same period in 2002 when $10.02 billion was spent,
according to shopping search and comparison site BizRate.com. For the
first nine months of this year, online sales totaled $37.16 billion,
up by 24% from last year's $29.90 billion for the same period.


Actual orders grew by 47% to 101.34 million unique transactions in
the third quarter. However, the average purchase amount has decreased
by 15% to $123 in Q3 2003 compared to $145 in the same period last
year.


The lower transaction amounts are being driven by price comparison
shopping. In a BizRate.com Online Research Value Panel in September
2003, 78% of online buyers cited they were deal shopping because of
tighter budgets. And, ninety-six percent said they comparison shop
some, most or all of the time. Nearly half of online buyers (48%) are
using aggregators such as comparison shopping sites, shopping
portals, search engines and auction sites to start their shopping
versus going directly to a merchant site (52%).


Women are also driving most online transactions with September
research highlighting that 62% of online buyers were females and only
38% are male.


Online shoppers are also expected to show more loyalty to price than
store brand this holiday season as 45% of shoppers say they would not
pay any price premium at all. The top categories in terms of sales
volume were computer hardware ($3.09 billion), electronics ($1.97
billion), apparel ($1.28 billion) and entertainment ($1.24 billion).
The strongest growth in Q3 came from Food & Wine (up 208%), Gifts &
Flowers (up 198%), Office Supplies (up 182%) and Entertainment (up
181%) categories.


For Q4, the holiday quarter, BizRate.com forecasts $18.35 billion in
online sales which is a 22% increase in spending over last year's
$15.04 billion.


************************************************************


Comments? Questions? Email me!

************************************************************

Masha E. Geller
Editor in Chief
MediaPost Communications
masha@...
www.mediapost.com


Just An Online Minute for Thursday, October 2, 2003:
http://www.mediapost.com/dtls_dsp_onlineminute.cfm?fnl=031002

----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------
You are receiving this newsletter at guy@... as part of your
free membership with MediaPost. If this issue was forwarded to you
and you would like to begin receiving a copy of your own, please
visit our site - www.mediapost.com - and click on [subscribe] in the
e-newsletter box.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------
If you'd rather not receive this newsletter in the future click here.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------
We welcome and appreciate forwarding of our newsletters in their
entirety or in part with proper attribution. (c) MediaPost
Communications 2003