E-Commerce Is Garnering a Higher Percentage of Total Holiday Sales, Says First Data

More consumers appear to be at ease shopping online, at least during the holiday season. Online sales account for 20.6% of total sales since Oct. 31, says First Data Corp. For the same period last year, e-commerce sales accounted for 17.8% of total sales.

The share of retail sales attributed to e-commerce, on a year-to-date basis, also is growing. First Data says 19% of total retail sales have come from e-commerce sites, compared with 15.7% for the same period in 2014.

“We expect that will continue to grow,” Krish Mantripragada, First Data senior vice president of information and analytics solutions, tells Digital Transactions News. The Atlanta-based payments processor analyzed transactions at more than 1.3 million merchant locations and at more than 139,000 e-commerce sites. First Data’s analysis includes transaction data from Oct. 31 through Dec. 14 for businesses that have processed with the company for at least 13 months.

“Clearly, as more and more consumers get comfortable shopping online, they are shopping at their own convenience and doing it more frequently in bite sizes,” Mantripragada says. “We did notice some marginal drop in ticket sizes in some categories, but the number of times that people shopped increased.”

For example, the average ticket for purchases—whether made online or in a store—made at sporting-goods retailers went from $83.04 in 2014 to $82.06, and the average sale at clothing stores fell from $88.30 to $83.43.

“That is clearly a trend across categories,” Mantripragada says, “where convenience is trumping a trip to the store.”

Of the merchant categories tracked in the First Data report, only non-store retailers, such as mail order/telephone order firms, posted no sales growth for either the year-to-date or the holiday-shopping periods.

Indeed, three merchant categories—general merchandise, sporting goods, and building materials—accounted for nearly 60% of the total e-commerce growth this holiday season. But, in the January through November period, they were only 26% of the growth.

The implication of this affinity for shopping online is that retailers no longer can view having a slick mobile app or Web site as a luxury, Mantripragada says. “It’s a requirement.”

Total retail sales for the holiday season so far increased 2.4%, compared with a 1.8% growth for the same period a year ago. Brick-and-mortar growth overall was 2% and e-commerce growth was 4.6%.