Retail Sales and Digital Channels this Holiday Season

By Kvantum Team Posted December 27, 2015 In Retail, Digital Marketing, Industry Trends, Holiday Shopping

In earlier days, only some of us had high-speed Internet access at home and online holiday shopping was done on the sly during work hours. Thanksgiving weekend was when online holiday shopping began in earnest. A decade later, we’re streaming television at home, talking our favorite brands on social media and constantly connected to everything on smartphones and tablets — devices that didn’t even exist 10 years ago. Let’s take a look at the current landscape of Sales and Digital channels this Holiday season.

E-retailers enjoy a 24% jump in Thanksgiving sales as posted by E-retailer. E-commerce sales were up 24% on Thanksgiving morning, reaching the half-billion-dollar mark, as shoppers jumped on early holiday deals, even though the discounts weren’t as steep as last year’s. Shoppers on smartphones and tablets drove 52% of the traffic, with the smartphone share of mobile purchases growing 30%, to 17% this Thanksgiving from 13% during the same period in 2014. ChannelAdvisor Corp.’s mid-day Thanksgiving report shows e-commerce sales soaring 50.6% year over year for its e-retailer clients. The hot-selling products on Thanksgiving Day are Apple watches, Samsung 4K TVs, Sony PlayStaton 4, Xbox One, and Beats by Dr. Dre, according to IBM and Adobe.

Cyber Monday 2015 is expected to be even more successful than 2014, which racked up $2.5 billion in sales. Posted by Martech Advisor- As Black Friday Hype Wanes, Marketers Must Shift Their Holiday Retail Focus to Cyber Monday and Online Channels. The challenge for marketers is connecting with online holiday shoppers across all digital channels – email, mobile, desktop and web.

Forrester Forecasts Mobile To Drive Ecommerce To 14% Of Holiday Sales as posted by MediaPost. Forrester Research expects that Americans will spend $95.5 billion online this holiday season, a jump of 11%. And while ecommerce accounted for about 10% of all sales for most of the year, the research firm expects that share to rise to 14% for the months of November and December. Much of the growth is likely to come from mobile. Cyber Monday is expected to be even bigger than last year’s $2.5 billion.

Retailers Plan Promotions, Discounts to Stimulate Lackluster Holiday Forecast as posted by BrandChannel. According to a new survey by BDO, some 70 percent of retail CMOs anticipate the industry will offer more discounts and promotions this holiday season than last year. Several indicators, however, project a smaller increase in fourth-quarter retail sales in 2015 than last year’s 3.7 percent gain. CPG companies expect more restraint by Americans this year in outfitting their holiday tables as well as what they spread under the Christmas tree.

Shoppers are expected to spend $70.1 billion via digital channels, which would represent a 14% gain year-over-year. Mobile shoppers will spend $11.7 billion this holiday season representing about 17% of all digital commerce, per comScore as per article by MediaPost - Mobile Holiday Commerce Forecast To Hit $11.7B**.** Cyber Monday the first Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday weekend -- to surpass $3 billion in online sales, and become the heaviest online spending day in history for the sixth straight year.

comScore predicts an increase of 15% in e-commerce in November and December as per MediaPost- ComScore Predicts Biggest Cyber Monday, Record M-commerce**.** While the sales growth in desktop spending -- which reached $53.3 billion in November and December of last year -- is slowing, m-commerce is coming on strong, up 70% in the third quarter. comScore says these mobile transactions are likely to surpass $10 billion in sales for the two-month holiday period. And it predicts that all digital commerce -- typically about 13.1% of discretionary spending -- will rise to 15% in the fourth quarter. Forrester Research has predicted an 11% gain in online sales for the period. And last month, the National Retail Federation is expecting that between browsing and actually buying, 46.1% of all holiday shopping will be done online -- up from 44.4% last year.

Google has pulled data from Google Maps showing where people tend to shop on Black Friday as posted by MediaPost- Google Shares Location, Search Data Store Traffic Patterns For The First Time**.** The data analyzes store traffic pattern by looking at mobile location history data in aggregate, as well as search trends. Mobile sales also grew, with 25.9% of all online sales coming from mobile devices, up 27.8% compared with last year. Smartphones accounted for 36% of all online traffic, more than three times the rate of tablets at 10.6%. Smartphones also surpassed tablets in sales, driving 13.85 of online sales versus tablets at 12.1%. Desktop had the highest average order value at $135.38.

Will the sales this holiday season will surpass sales from last year? Which digital channel will bring in more sales this holiday season? Feel free to share your comments with us.

Image Source- http://www.freeimages.com/photo/season-s-sale-1-1238214

In Retail, Digital Marketing, Industry Trends, Holiday Shopping