In the U.K., online Christmas shopping is already well underway, with cyber shopping traffic up 23 percent in the third week of November versus the shopping activity in the base month of October. Christmas shopping in France started more slowly, but is beginning to gather pace and grew by 18 percent over October's level in the third week of November. German activity was actually 10 percent lower than in October caused in part by the trade union strikes in the transport and service industries that are currently affecting the German economy as a whole.
These figures reinforce the results of the comScore Christmas Shopping Survey, released last week, which found that 30 percent of U.K. respondents intended to start their Christmas shopping within the first two weeks of November. Comparatively, only 19 percent of French respondents said that they intended to start their Christmas shopping during this period. While 38% of the German's surveyed had planned to start shopping by now, the delivery uncertainty seems to be interfering.
"Online shopping is one of the most popular of internet activities," said Bob Ivins, comScore EVP of European Markets. "Over the next few weeks, we would not expect to see a huge increase in the number of online shoppers - they are already there - accounting for 70 percent of the total European online population. But what we will see is a significant increase in the frequency of shopping online, and an increase in the conversion of browsers to buyers, which ultimately means more online sales this Christmas."
(i)Point index represents the percentage change in the number of visits to secure sections of online retail sites compared to the pre-Christmas season base period average
(ii)Derived from the average weekly visits to secure sections of online retail sites for the period Oct 1 - Oct 28
