With consumers' spending power on the high street expected to be hit by a slowing economy, e-commerce is expected by some to be the one bright spot for retailers this Christmas.
IMRG released its predictions for Q4 yesterday, forecasting a 15% year on year rise in online shopping.
With this in mind, I've taken a look at some other predictions for Christmas 2008 for the UK and US markets...
IMRG / Capgemini:
- UK shoppers will spend £13.16bn online in the last quarter of 2008, 15% more than Q4 2007.
- This equates to £215 for every person in the UK, but represents a slowdown compared with the 54% year on year increase in 2007.
- IMRG predicts that Monday 8th December will be the busiest day for etailers, with £320m of sales. Peak web shopping times are expected between 1pm and 2pm.
Verdict Research:
- Verdict has a more optimistic outlook, predicting that Christmas online sales in the UK will hit £7bn, a 39.9% increase.
US holiday season - Forrester:
- A similar pattern is expected in the US, with Forrester predicting that shoppers will spend $44bn in November and December.
- This would be an increase of 12% over Christmas 2007, but indicates slower growth than in previous years.
eMarketer:
- eMarketer predicts that online xmas sales (November and December) will reach $32bn in 2008, up 10% over 2007.
I'll check again in January to see how accurate these predictions prove to be...
Related articles:
An internet Christmas round-up...
Xmas etail stats round-up
Related research:
Internet Statistics Compendium - October 2008
Graham Charlton is Editor at Econsultancy. Follow him on Twitter or connect via Linkedin or Google+.
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4:31PM on 18th August 2009
Do you have the same predictions for 2009?