Weekly Online Holiday Retail Sales Pass $6.2 Billion

This past week, ended December 18, online holiday sales finally blew past the $6 million mark and surged to $6.28 billion, led by four individual days surpassing $1 billion in sales, according to comScore, a company that tracks digital data. Online sales for the week increased 14 percent versus the same period of the prior year. Several times this year weekly online sales were flirting with the $6 billion mark.

The final online shopping weekend before Christmas, where shipping was guaranteed, reached $1.04 billion to rank as the second heaviest weekend of online spending on record.

“With only a few more days until Christmas, the preponderance of Americans’ late season holiday shopping will shift to brick-and-mortar retail, although the procrastinators among us will still be able to take advantage of expedited shipping and buy online up to and including the day before Christmas Eve with the guarantee of having their gifts delivered in time for the holiday,” said Gian Fulgoni, comScore chairman. “In total, we will see another $5 or $6 billion in e-commerce spending over the remainder of December to finish off what has clearly been an outstanding season for online retailers.”

Holiday season retail e-commerce spending for the first 48 days of the November – December 2011 holiday season (ended December 18), has increased 15 percent to $31.97 billion, the Reston, Va.-based reports.  Overall holiday online retail spending in 2011 is already approaching the 2010 online holiday season total of $32.6 billion with nearly two weeks left in the season.

For the 2011 holiday season-to-date, 10 days have surpassed $1 billion in online retail sales.