As Christmas nears, online holiday sales continue to climb

Another week and another strong online showing for the holiday shopping season according to Slice Intelligence’s most recent data. As previously reported, this holiday shopping season has been the strongest yet for online retailers, a trend that shows no signs of letting up. Online revenue for the season (which began November 1 and runs through Christmas) is up 24 percent over the same period in 2016. This growth is fed by a 16 percent increase in online shoppers and a seven percent increase in the amount each buyer is spending.

The list of the top 10 online retailers for the holiday season continues to include the likes of  Target, Kohl’s, Macy’s, Nordstrom, and Costco. Target (54 percent) and Costco (60 percent) both show incredible growth year-over-year, while department store mainstays are getting in on some of the good business action, as well. Nordstrom and Macy’s are showing growth of 16 percent and 19 percent, respectively, whereas Kohl’s has grown an impressive 41 percent from last year’s holiday season.

“Brick and mortar retailers have collectively done a great job this holiday season, with growth rates well in excess of overall category growth,” said Ken Cassar, principal analyst, Slice Intelligence. “There is still one more week of peak sales to go, and a lot of packages to deliver, so let’s hope the retailers are up to the large task of fulfilling these orders.”

Amazon’s 24 percent growth is lower than the previously mentioned retailers, but Amazon’s growth continues to outpace the category, and they are grabbing more market share to boot. As the calendar flips closer to Christmas, Amazon’s market share tends to rise and so far, this year is no exception. Including just an extra week of online shopping data, Amazon’s online market share increased an entire percentage point from where it was last week.

With a panel of 5 million online shoppers, Slice Intelligence gives the most detailed, and accurate digital commerce data available, and is reported daily.

Slice Intelligence is the only service to measure digital commerce directly from the consumer, across all retailers, at the item level, and over time. Our retailer-independent methodology precisely measures commerce as it happens. By extracting detailed information from hundreds of millions of aggregated and anonymized e-receipts, Slice can map the entire Purchase Graph, connecting each and every consumer to all their purchases.

Slice gets its data from e-receipts – not a browser, app or software installed by the end-user – so its measurement reflects comprehensive shopping behavior across multiple devices, over time which are key in an increasingly omnichannel retail world. Slice Intelligence is the exclusive e-commerce data provider for the NPD’s Checkout Tracking e-commerce service.