All-Time Online Shopping Record Emerges, Growth Concerns Linger

Online shopping tallies continued their year-over-year gains last week, and a fresh, one-day record emerged. According to research group comScore, December 10th was the biggest online shopping day on record, reaching a healthy revenue total of $881 million. Between November 1st and December 14th, online spending totaled $22.7 billion, a bump from year-ago figures of $19.2 billion. On the music side, digital downloads moved upward 35.9 percent to 15.6 million a-la-carte downloads for the week ending December 9th. Cumulative annual downloads are now up 45.9 percent to 766.3 million units, according to figures published by Nielsen Soundscan.
All of that sounds impressive, though some signs of sluggishness are surfacing. Despite the one-day record, online shopping volumes are growing at a slower pace than last year. Specifically, year-over-year gains for the holiday period improved by roughly 18 percent, slower than a 26 percent gain from last year, according to comScore. And households with less than $50,000 in annual earnings are showing the slowest purchasing activity, a sign of possible consumer anxiety.
Meanwhile, the same type of slowdown is being found in the paid download arena. At the end of 2006, year-over-year paid download volumes had jumped 65 percent to 581.9 million, a more aggressive pace. The year earlier, the growth rate was 147 percent, though total volumes of 352.7 million were considerably smaller.