The Most Wonderful (time of the) Year for Online Retailers

The New York Times reports today that:

When the receipts are tallied from this holiday, American consumers will have spent around $29.5 billion at Internet shops, according to projections published by comScore, a market research firm.

And according to Bloomberg:

Online spending growth outpaced total U.S. retail gains. Internet purchases from Nov 1 through Dec 21 increased 19 percent from a year earlier to $26.3 billion, ComScore Inc. said on Dec. 23.

Bloomberg also reports that bricks and mortar retailers are still slashing prices in hopes of avoiding the worst holiday season since 2002.

In comparison, Amazon claims this was the “best season ever.” And while the actual numbers weren’t released, Amazon had some interesting facts to share about their sales that I found both in their press release and in this New York Post article:

• The busiest day was Dec. 10, when customers ordered 5.4 million items – 62.5 per second.
• The Nintendo Wii flew off the virtual shelves at a rate of 17 per second
• It sold enough high-def DVD players to cover seven football fields; auto wrenches to stretch all the way around the Daytona 500 track; and Hannah Montana wigs to outfit the entire audience at her Dec 20 show in Providence, RI.
• The top DVD stocking stuffers included “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” “Planet Earth: The Complete BBC Series,” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.”
• Top books included “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert and “I am America (And So Can You)” by Stephen Colbert.