Today’s a fun one for retail research.
First, I received an update from Compete’s blog deconstructing the myth of Cyber Monday:
Social Networks Impact Retail Sites
If Santa’s sled is extra heavy this year, his reindeer can blame it on Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo – a new report from Hitwise indicates that social networks are having a huge impact on retail sites.
Hitwise Launches Retail Data Center to Public
Hitwise, announced the launch of its new Retail Data Center. This publicly available website provides weekly online shopping trend data, based on how U.S. Internet users interact with more than 20,000 online shopping sites, across 21 shopping categories such as Video Games, Electronics and Apparel.
Online Holiday Retail Sales To Set Record
U.S. online holiday retail sales will reach $39 billion in 2007, an increase of 20 percent over last year’s holiday season according to a new report from JupiterResearch, "US Online Retail Holiday Forecast, 2007."
Shop.org Summit: Online Retail Trends
Whether an online retailer is also on top of the (virtual) world or is just starting out, they’ve likely got a lot to learn. And as worlds both physical and virtual move forward, Donna Hoffman of the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing (and UC Riverside) has shared “10 Trends You Can’t Afford to Miss.”
ShopLocal Introduces Online Retail Index
ShopLocal, a multi-channel shopping and marketing firm has introduced The ShopLocal Index, a market indicator focused on tracking the influence of the Internet on in-store shopping.
Social Networks and Online Retail
Social networks and online communities have little impact on online retail sales according to a report from JupiterResearch, "Us Retail Consumer survey, 2007."
Search Engines Drive Traffic To Retail Sites
Retail Web sites received 25 percent of their traffic from search engines for May 2007, according to findings from Hitwise. This was an increase of 0.7 percent over May 2006.
Holiday Online Retail Rejoices With $11.7B
Heavy Internet traffic to websites was virtually matched by the money people were willing to spend on retailer sites, by almost 25 percent more than last year.
Online Retail Soars as Cyber Monday Approaches
The Department of Commerce reports that online retail sales in the third quarter grew at four times the rate of total retail sales. In total, online retail sales in the third quarter reached $27.5 billion, which represents a 20.9% increase over the third quarter in 2005. In comparison, total offline retail sales for the third quarter 2006 are only up 5.1% from a year ago.