comScore: Shorter holiday season bodes ill for etailers

With two days to go until Christmas Day, shoppers are spending plenty of money online but they may not be spending enough to make up for etailers' deficits because of the shortened holiday season. Although ecommerce saw an all time high of more than $850 million spent in one day earlier this month, the overall spend is still down compared to early projections.

by Kristina Knight

For the first 49 days of the holiday shopping season consumers spent just over $24 billion, that is a decrease of about 1% year over year. On average shoppers are spending about $640 million each day, an increase of 5% over 2007.

"With five fewer days of holiday shopping between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, there is increasing pressure on consumers to make their holiday purchases in time for Christmas," said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. "We've seen online shoppers continue to spend heavily even later into the season, with the most recent week including four of the top ten spending days of the season. Despite this positive development, the combination of the compressed holiday schedule and the challenging economic situation faced by many consumers means that retailers have their work cut out for them this season."

The Sports & Fitness category is seeing the most growth (31%) with Books & Magazines showing 18% growth. Surprisingly the Music/Movies/Video category has shown a 24% decrease.