U.S. Online Spending Predicted To Reach $37.6 Billion For Nov and Dec

[engine]

U.S. Online Spending Predicted To Reach $37.6 Billion For November and December [uk.reuters.com]

U.S. online spending should increase 15 percent this holiday season, outpacing even last year's torrid growth, as shoppers are enticed by more retailers offering free or low-cost shipping, analytics firm comScore said.

ComScore estimated on Wednesday that e-commerce sales for the November and December period would reach $37.6 billion this year, after getting off to a fast start: the firm said on Tuesday that online sales were up 14 percent in the first 20 days of November.

[nomis5]

Why walk the High Streets, dragging the screaming kids with you when you can do it online? Take them to see a movie or kick a football in the park instead. It makes sense every way you look at it.

[bwnbwn]

Boy I can see the States now drooling over all that lost tax money. I have feeling this time next year I will be trying to figure out how to collect taxes on my sales. I know it's coming and the very best way to collect taxes is one sales tax for all states, counties, and cities on internet sales. It won't happen because it is the smartest way to do it. I will probably have 2 gigs of data just for the sales tax code in my cart from all the wild and crazy ways each State collects taxes.

[dpd1]

I try to buy everything online now. Even just stupid stuff, like bathroom supplies and everything. The deals are good, and anytime I go out searching for stuff in stores, I wish I hadn't. Went to Lowes the other day... What a nightmare. The hustle and bustle this time of year is sort of fun to experience a couple times. But that's about it. After you see your third car accident in just 5 miles of driving, you just want to get home in one piece. This time of year everybody turns insane.

I just noticed Amazon charged me tax for the first time the other day. .90 cents on about $40. I haven't even kept up with what's going on, but I assume this is part of the deal they made with CA. Also noticed stuff has gotten here very quickly. Maybe the opened a warehouse here. However, those OnTrac guys are terrible.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

At a cost of 32 billion in advertising of which Google netted 30 billion. wow.

[dpd1]

Well, whoever did the predicting seems to have done a good job. My personal sales have been slow, but I'm not surprised. I'm not really a holiday niche.

Market bounced back some too. Now if we can get past this Euro thing, everything should be looking pretty good.

[enigma1]

if we can get past this Euro thing

What euro thing? Euro is doing great, getting stronger while representing in recession economies, therefore usd has effectively no competition.

[dpd1]

The European debt crisis? Kind of a big deal right now. It's creating fear and volatility in both Europe and the US. People fear another 08-like meltdown.

[enigma1]

yeah, but you shouldn't worry about US in terms of international comparison of currencies I think.

The euro is very expensive right now, so US exports are more attractive even in EU.

And if the usd increases it's value just because the euro weakens at some point (because of the EU debt), US will print more. EU isn't business oriented you see even now, they still target a strong currency and so anything they try to export is very expensive in comparison with what other countries export.

[dpd1]

The technical aspects of it could all be true, but I'm just thinking of the psychological aspects. I don't know what the news is like over there, but over here... if they have a doom and gloom story, they're going to run with it. So people turn on the news, hear about the "European Crisis"... and how it "could be another Lehman or worse, which spreads to US banks", and that makes people afraid. And obviously that's bad. I even saw Warren Buffett the other day, saying this was a "great concern". I don't know, maybe over there people are less affected by that sort of thing, or the news doesn't try to terrify everybody all the time.