Some shopping malls are blaming light crowds of holiday shoppers on unseasonably warm weather. But they might want to pay closer attention to the rapidly growing competition from online retailers.
Industry experts expect online retail sales to triple this holiday season to approximately US$3.5 billion.
Retail analysts say online shopping remains a small segment of the industry, considering that Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) are on track for more than $120 billion in sales for the year ending in January 1999.
Promises of sharply higher online sales have propelled Internet-related stocks to stratospheric heights, despite the fact that many are still losing money.
Wal-Mart and other traditional retailers are also moving into cyber-commerce, a move that could quickly increase Internet sales.
Among hot retailing Web sites, Computershopper.com, the electronic commerce channel of Ziff-Davis' ZDNet Web site, said Wednesday that 30 November was its busiest shopping day ever, generating $1.3 million in orders.
Traffic for its channel on 30 November was up 25 percent over the average daily traffic of any other day in November. ZDNet's e-commerce arm said orders for November totaled more than $27 million, a 7 percent increase over October's orders. Compared to November 1997, orders and traffic for November were up more than 203 percent and 143 percent respectively.
Other online retailers also witnessed a pickup in sales: Beyond.com, an online software store, said its Web site sales rose 700 percent on Thanksgiving weekend.
PC Flowers and Gifts, partly owned by direct marketer Fingerhut (FHT), reported that sales rose 50 to 60 percent over the same period last year.
InternetTrak, which conducts Internet surveys, said in a recent survey that US adults are most likely to purchase music, books, clothing, computer products, and children's items -- including games and toys -- online.
"This is a testimonial to the power of today's Internet economy," says Al DiGuido, executive vice president and group publisher of ZD's Computer Shopper.
According to a ZDNet survey, 68 million US adults used the Web during the past three months and 6.4 million of them plan to do some of their holiday shopping online.
Big Entertainment (BIGE)-- which reported sales in the six-figure range just a week after launching its Internet site -- announced it would sell its 15 mall stores and market its Hollywood and entertainment-related products over the Internet.
Copyright© 1998 Reuters Limited.
