Online sales under pressure too

Despite free shipping offers and extensive promotions, online sales are in for a challenging holiday season this year.

Online audience measurement company comScore, reported that retail e-commerce spending through the first 23 days of November had declined 4% to $8.19 billion from sales of $8.51 during the same period last year. Its forecast for the full November and December period calls for sales to be equal with last year’s total of $29.2 billion, which represented a 19% increase from the prior year. The anticipated deceleration is due to a litany of familiar sources.

“Despite the recent reprieve that plummeting gas prices have given American consumers, the depressed and volatile stock market, declining housing prices, inflation and the weak job market all represent dark clouds hanging over their heads this holiday shopping season,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “With consumer confidence low and disposable income tight, the first weeks of November have been very disappointing, with online retail spending declining versus year ago. It’s also likely that some budget conscious consumers are planning to wait to buy until later in the season to take advantage of retailers’ even more aggressive discounting.”

Target operates one of the nation’s most heavily trafficked Web sites and closely follows Wal-Mart. During October, the most recent month for which comScore traffic numbers are available, Wal-Mart had 33 million unique visitors compared to Target with 30.9 million unique visitors. Amazon was the retail leader with 60 million unique visitors to its site, followed by Apple with 48 million.