Retail sales may have been down in stores from Black Friday to Cyber Monday, but online experiences and retailers' ability to meet expectations were up, according to the DynamicAction Retail Holiday Index.
Now that retailers have put their Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales behind them, many are gearing up for another potential holiday season gauntlet: A possible crush of procrastinators hitting their stores and websites at the last minute.
While more peak-season shopping will likely be done online this year than ever before in North America, one of the most important factors in a shopper's decision to use the web will be cost rather than speed of delivery, according to a consumer survey conducted by Canadian parcel and freight service Purolator International, along with the Stony Brook University Center for Survey Research.
Mobile has firmly won the battle of devices this holiday season at Walmart, where mobile made up more than 70 percent of traffic to the retailer's website since Thanksgiving.
While physical gift card purchases and receipts are still preferred over digital, both awareness and actual use of digital gifts is growing, with male shoppers leading the way, says research from Stored Value Solutions. The research also suggests that adoption can be accelerated by making users, both givers and receivers, comfortable with the form factor.
A new online service called PriceLocal aims to level the playing field and let local retailers price-match items and provide same day availability. PriceLocal was developed by a former Borders executive, Matt Chosid, as a way for smaller merchants to compete.
In early November, Amazon repriced 55 percent of its best-selling office/school products and 45 percent of its best-selling toys/games from one day to the next.
Anyone looking for more proof that holiday shopping begins earlier has some new statistics to cite: 56.6 percent of those celebrating the holidays had begun shopping by early November, up from 54.4 percent last year and up further from the 49 percent who had started by this time in 2008, the first time the National Retail Federation asked the question.