Consumers Pick a Side this Holiday Season

Shopper’s set the trend for the holiday season

Choosing to conduct their gift purchases from the warmth of home online, they leave the storefront out in the cold.

According to The NPD Group Inc.’s Shopping Activity Weekly Holiday Trends report, e-commerce’s share of buying visits jumped to 17.3 percent of the total during the week ended Monday, December 5, up from 13.9 percent during the week prior and 12.8 percent during the week ended November 21. Last week’s escalation made the record books as the largest increase documented in the visitation metric since NPD commenced weekly tracking in August.

Meanwhile, the brick-and-mortar share of buying visits dropped to 82.7 percent last week from 86.1 percent during the week including Thanksgiving and 87.2 percent during the week before that. As if decrease on visits weren’t enough, the percentage of “engaged” shoppers who actually made at least one purchase in a store they entered fell to 66.9 percent last week from 67.9 the week of Thanksgiving.

This slight drop in the conversion rate did not alarm Marshal Cohen, NPD’s chief industry analyst. “The overall dip in brick-and-mortar shopping conversion is expected during this time period,” said Cohen. “What is interesting is how the online business has become a bigger part of holiday shopping all season long.”

On the up side, the number of buying visits increased for the second week in a row in a combined effort between online retailers and storefront. This 5.6 percent upward shift came during the week of Thanksgiving, identifying the first occurrence since tracking began that the number grew within two continuous weeks.