Online shopping looking good
The latest reports on how online shopping is shaping up this year according to this New York Times story (registration required):
Although the online forecasts vary widely and some have not been revised, the main research firms that track Internet retail sales are all predicting double-digit percentage growth this holiday season. If even the most cautious numbers are borne out, this will be the biggest holiday period yet for online shopping, topping the $11.2 billion that Jupiter Research counted for the 2001 season.
Through the first three weeks of November, online sales of nontravel goods were $4.5 billion, up 29 percent from the comparable period last year, according to the Internet monitoring firm Nielsen/NetRatings. Another research firm, comScore Media Metrix, says that 9 million to 10 million people bought something online in November, up from about 7 million a year earlier