Market research firms have chimed in on holiday shopping (including Black Friday and Cyber Monday) predictions for both online retailers (or e-tailers) and brick-and-mortar retailers. The bottom line looks good for e-tailers. Unfortunately, the news for retailers is not so good.
Black Friday online specials will abound, and Cyber Monday specials will be upcoming, so there is a high degree of expectation that online sales will be good this holiday season. In fact, market research firm comScore, which speciailizes in the Web, foresees a 3 percent rise in online shopping during the holidays.
However, while comScore has good predictions in store for e-tailers, things are not so rosy for the brick-and-mortar retailer, such as Macy's, for example. In that case, the National Retail Federation, the largest retail trade group, predicts that retail shopping will drop one percent from last year. It should be noted, however, that comScore's numbers include sales from online stores for brick-and-mortar retailers such as the above-mentioned Macys, or Walmart, or Target, and more.
The year 2008 was the first year that negative growth was shown for e-tailers, since tracking by comScore began in 2001. In fact, comScore ntoed a 3 percent drop in sales from 2007 last year, when the recession was fresh in people's minds. Most e-commerce trackers, including comScore, believe the trend will reverse itself in 2009.
Forrester Research states that currently online shopping accounts for 7 percent of overall sales. That might seem small, but it continues to grow for the simple reason that it is more convenient than brick-and-mortar shopping. Not only is time saved, there's no need to waste gasoline driving to a store, no waiting in lines, and in with H1N1 swine flu spreading, also no need to take the chance exposing yourself to huge crowds of possibly contagious people.
It's also true that many sites now offer free shipping, and for people in sales-tax laden states, many sites such as Amazon.com offer, at least for now, a sales-tax free way to shop.
Dominika Osmolska of California said "I haven't stepped foot in a mall for at least 5 years. I do most of my shopping at Amazon.com, where I not only get free shipping on most items, I get better prices overall, and save 8.75 percent on sales tax. I also hate crowds, and waiting in lines." She added that she feared California would adopt the same sort of "Amazon tax" that the state of New York has adopted.
Indeed, Amazon.com, which already has posted Black Friday online specials during this entire week, was one of the more successful e-tailers last year. In fact, Amazon.com reported the 2008 holiday shopping period as what it called its "best ever" holiday season. Amazon's fourth-quarter revenue rose 18 percent to $6.7 billion last year.
Written by Michael Santo
HULIQ.com
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