Online holiday shopping bumps up. The amount of money spent shopping online during the holiday season increased this year compared with last, say two recent reports, another sign of the Internet's continuing permeation of American life.
SpendingPulse, a report from MasterCard, pegged the year-over-year rise at 15.4 percent. The report, released this week and covering the period from October 31 to December 24, looks at sales in the MasterCard payment network and combines those figures with survey-derived estimates of non-credit-card purchases. According to the report, apparel sales led the field among e-commerce categories, a sign, perhaps, that shoppers are becoming more comfortable with buying clothing sight unseen. Best Of 2010: Mobile Commerce. Shopping Online via Cellphone for Holiday Gifts. Shopping on cellphones and portable tablet computers like iPads accounted for about 5 percent of online sales in November, while last year mobile shopping sales were too insignificant to measure, according to Coremetrics, an e-commerce measurement service owned by Many more shoppers are using their phones to research items and compare prices before making purchases offline or on computers.
“There were early adopters last year, but it’s absolutely real this year,” said Kelly O’Neill, director of industry marketing for ATG, which provides online and mobile commerce technology to retailers like and . And mobile shoppers are buying high-ticket items like diamond rings and cars, not just virtual goods and ring tones.
On Dec. 12, ’s busiest mobile shopping day of the year, worldwide mobile sales nearly tripled from last year to $13 million, according to the company, which expects $1.5 billion in mobile sales this year. The M-commerce Challenge. You may not have heard of Shopkick yet, but it’s one of the best examples of the dramatic changes facing retailers now.
An application that runs on iPhones, Shopkick pays consumers “kickbucks” — reward coupons — just for checking in when they enter Best Buy, American Eagle, Macy’s, or other participating retailers. Additional kickbucks are available for performing particular actions — for example, scanning a poster on a store’s dressing room wall into the iPhone camera.