ComScore, a digital analytics firm has recently released its analysis report of retail e-commerce sales for the second quarter of current year, which indicates that $37.5 billion dollars were spent through e-commerce sales which are 14% more than the last year’s Q2 e-commerce payments. This growth rate represents the E-commerce payments experienced its seventh successive quarter of year over year positive growth because the number of online retail users has gradually increased by 16% over the same period, likely contributing drastically to the overall e-commerce payments boost.
“The Q2 of 2011 saw a continuation of this year’s solid double-digit growth trends in online spending, well ahead of the rate of growth in consumers’ overall spending,” as said by Gian Fulgoni, ComScore chairman. He also pointed out that small online charges and convenience are the main motivating forces for the rise in e-commerce payment acceptance.
Main Findings of This Report Consist of:
- The 14% rise in the second quarter was mainly due to the 16% rise in the number of online users with estimation that 70% of all Internet users purchased at least one product online in the quarter.
- 66.4% of dollars which were spent online were accounted by the top 25 online merchants, down from 67.7% last year and down from a peak of 69.9% in third quarter of 2010 as small and mid-sized merchants persist to recover from lost market share.
- The highest gainers amongst all online product categories were Computer Software and hardware, Event Tickets and Consumer Electronics.
Online Sales Beat Pre-Recession Levels
Online trading in the second quarter of 2011 is considerably higher than those in the first three quarters of 2007, prior to the beginning of the worldwide recession. As compared to second quarter of the year 2007, online trading of around $27.2 billion, second quarter of 2011 online trading are up by 38%.
“With financial growth continuing to be low; the unemployment rate persistently high and financial markets in chaos, customers are not as much confident today than they were in previous years, which lifts worries for the coming years. We consider the Q3 of this year will be a vital sign of which way this market is actually headed and what that will mean for customer expenses.” stated by ComScore.
Fulgoni also predicted that the Q3 of this year will be a main indicator in what is to come in customer activities, comprising the prospect of e-commerce payments in the coming year.
