US online sales during holiday period up by 12 percent

Just released data from comScore highlights a 12 percent

increase for ecommerce in December, despite the performance during the week prior to Christmas fell behind expectations. In the biggest month of the year for retailers, there were 10 individual billion dollars spending days.

In the week before Christmas, online sales continued to be strong yet didn’t meet expectations, as per data released by comScore. Ecommerce spending through December 22 came in at 42.8 billion dollars or a 10 percent ahead the year before.

"Strong momentum coming out of Thanksgiving, in addition to heavy weekend buying, suggested we would meet or exceed expectations as long as momentum continued through the final week before Christmas," said Gian Fulgoni, chairman at comScore.

"Unfortunately, the most recent week fell short of those expectations, and it looks like the final season growth rate will end up a few percentage points shy of what we had anticipated. In the end, I think we'll look back at this online holiday season as one where absolute dollar sales gains in consumer spending were held back by heavy retailer price discounting that occurred in an attempt to stimulate consumer demand, while at the same time, consumers weren't willing or able to increase their spending rate to fully compensate for the six-day shorter shopping period between Thanksgiving and Christmas."

Apparel/accessories was the second top category for the holiday season this year, right behind videogame consoles/accessories.

Top spending days were Cyber Monday (1.735 billion dollars), Green Monday (1.401 billion dollars) and Black Friday (1.199 billion dollars).