Online Holiday Shopping Well Underway

The leaves may barely be turning, but for some it’s already time to start thinking about holiday shopping.

Consumers are likely to start shopping online earlier this year, and they’re likely to spend more than they did last year, according to research from Shop.org. The 2004 Shop.org/BizRate.com “Online Holiday Mood Study” reports 53 percent of online shoppers plan to start their online holiday shopping by early October. This early activity has the jump on merchants, only 14 percent of which will have launched some form of online holiday promotions in the same period. The majority of online retailers (53 percent) won’t start holiday season promotions until after Halloween.

“The consumer demand to start shopping earlier is ahead of where the merchants are in terms of when they are planning to start their marketing for the holiday season.” Shop.org Executive Director Scott Silverman, told ClickZ. “It certainly seems like a missed opportunity for the retailers.”

Shop.org contacted 103 merchants and 1,722 consumers. Both are optimistic about online shopping this holiday season. Thirty-two percent of consumers plan to do more shopping online, and a very robust 98 percent of merchants anticipate holiday growth this year.

When Merchants Start Their Holiday Marketing
Starting Dates	Percent Start Marketing
10/3 – 10/9	14%
10/10 – 10/16	8%
10/17 – 10/23	13%
10/24 – 10/30	11%
10/31 – 11/6	20%
11/7 – 11/13	14%
11/14 – 11/20	16%
11/21 – 11/27	1%
11/28 – 12/4	1%
12/5 – 12/11	1%
Source: Shop.org

Shoppers will continue to use online retail sites for research purposes, according to the study. Respondents noted they’d be using the Internet to comparison shop (89 percent), and to research gifts for other others (86 percent). The number of those actually buying gifts was a slightly lower 74 percent of respondants who indicated they buy gifts for others. Only 53 percent said they’d use the Internet to buy gifts for themselves.

While online retailers may wait until after Halloween to start holiday promotions, the effect of the Halloween holiday is already playing out.

Shopping.com Consumer Demand Index statistics for the period spanning September 27 to October 10, 2004 show an increase in the number of searches for the keyword “costumes.” Despite the fact witches and goblins are increasing in popularity, Apple’s iPod remains a favorite top shopping search term.

Top 20 Shopping Searches
Rank	Keyword	Previous Rank
1	ipod	1
2	nikon d70	9
3	sony	2
4	iriver pmp 120	3
5	digital camera	5
6	shoes	6
7	mp3	7
8	canon	8
9	canon 20d	new
10	dvd	10
11	xbox	13
12	tv	new
13	tires	20
14	gps	11
15	pda	14
16	cell phones	12
17	panasonic	16
18	halloween costumes	new
19	laptop	15
20	speakers	new
Source: Shopping.com

September Online Shopping Growth

comScore data for the week ending September 26th shows a 53 percent increase over the same period last year. This was the strongest growth reported for the year since April 11th (57 percent).

Not everyone is overly optimistic. Forrester Research is predicts online holiday sales will grow to $13.2 billion, a 20 percent increase over 2003. They consider that “a good, but not great year-over-year increase.”