Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Chase Paymentech, comScore, Cyber Monday, Cyber Tuesday, e-commerce, holiday shopping, metrics
Data is still trickling in on Cyber Monday (see my earlier post) but the Chase Paymentech’s Holiday Pulse Index showed a 12% decline in Average Order Value compared to last year resulting in a less than a 1% increase in total revenue, a number that seems rather at odds with the 14% increase reported by comScore. Chase’s index is derived from credit card clearing data from 25 of the top 150 US internet retailers, so may not be at all representative of the industry as a whole. On the other hand, they get to watch every single dollar coming across so for the 25 companies that comprise their index they presumably have extremely accurate data.
ComScore, by contrast, “watches” about two million internet users and aggregates their shopping behavior across all the sites they visit. So it’s quite possible that both sets of data are correct which could imply a shift in online spending towards the longer end of the tail. (Since comScore’s data is a superset of Chase’s, it would be really interesting to see if they actually tally for the 25 Chase retailers).
Back to the Chase data: as expected in the Year of the Discount, the transaction volume was up sharply, but price reductions ate up the gain. Not reflected in any of the numbers are “extra” discounts like free shipping, bonus gift certificates, etc, which are likely to erode profits further.
Here are the actual charts:
2008 Chase Paymentech Pulse Index (Cyber Week Sales)
2008 Chase Paymentech Pulse Index (Cyber Week Transactions)
Most interestingly, “Cyber Tuesday” had significantly higher sales than Monday as well as being sharply higher than any of the Cyber days from 2007. In fact Cyber Wednesday and Thursday also saw more sales than Monday. Perhaps more support for my earlier theory that it’s difficult to promote Cyber Monday simultaneously with the Thanksgiving weekend store promotions.
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I guess Garfield’s not the only one that hate’s Mondays. Besides the “I hate Mondays” thing. It is my suspicion that all the advertisements for in store sales and the big Black Friday sales had something to do with it. I always shop online for presents at this time of year, but I have found myself more curious this year about Black Friday sales and ads I see in local newspapers. It feels like this is the year of the in store discount. Maybe others feel this too.
Comment by tara December 8, 2008 @ 1:51 pm