A friend, and fellow digital marketer, Michael Vorel, has just tweeted some good news for all of us dependent on the well-being of e-commerce:
Michael is referring to comScore’s U.S. retail e-commerce sales estimates for Q3 2010 which have been released just today, showing that “that online retail spending reached $32.1 billion for the quarter, up 9 percent versus year ago” [source].
Looking at comScore’s table here, and comparing 2009 volumes to what has already been registered in 2010 (see image below), the future of Q4 this year certainly looks promising.
In 2009 Q4 was the only quarter that showed growth (after a decline in 2008), and looking at the improvements we’ve seen this year (steady 9-10% growth every quarter), it seems that there is no reason for this to change in 2010.
In Q3 2010 comScore registered best performance in such product categories as books and magazines, computers (including peropherals and PDAs) and software, as well as consumer electronics. Not too long ago IBM predicted stronger November-December 2010 sales for consumer electronics merchants [source]. So, this is definitely a vertical for digital marketers (especially, affiliates) to watch (or even focus on) this Q4.
In addition to electronics, let’s also remember that last year the fourth quarter also yielded very good sales in such categories as jewelry and watches, books and music, movies and videos, sport and fitness equipment [more here].
As always, your thoughts on the subject of the post are much appreciated. So, if you have anything to add, please do post it in the “Comments” are blow.
It is a very good news!