In the Retail World, the Holidays Start Early

Online momentum
In recent years, online shopping has gained significant momentum during the holiday shopping season. Online holiday shopping increased 17% year over year in 2012, with four separate days during the holiday season breaking the $1 billion mark in e-commerce transactions; retail shopping, on the other hand, saw a 2% drop on Black Friday from its 2011 numbers and seemed to lag for much of the holiday season. The rise in online shopping numbers is likely to continue this year, especially if online retailers offer multiple days of Black Friday-like deals as they did last year.

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is one of the major beneficiaries of this trend toward online shopping during the holidays, with sales in the fourth quarter of 2012 increasing 22% over the previous year and over 26.5 million items ordered on the company’s peak sales day. While this increase corresponded with a net income loss of 45% compared to the same quarter of 2011, CEO Jeff Bezos attributed this at least in part to a shift in shopping trends including slowing growth of physical book sales.

Amazon isn’t the only company benefitting, however, as other major retailers struggle to strengthen their online offerings as well. Walmart.com featured several online-only holiday deals and online Black Friday shopping to bring in additional customers, while Kmart.com allows customers to layaway items and pick them up in local Kmart stores. Target.com has offered weekly deals and special online-only coupons in the past as well.

Final thoughts
While it remains to be seen which retailers will come out on top in regard to holiday shopping, there’s a good chance that this year’s holiday season will be stronger than the holidays have been recently. Though the Chicago-based research firm ShopperTrak believes that holiday shopping growth may increase by as little as 2.4% this year based on a sluggish back-to-school season and shorter shopping period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, retailers are attempting to improve their odds by starting the holiday shopping season before summer even ends.

The article In the Retail World, the Holidays Start Early originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by John Casteele.

John Casteele owns shares of Wal-Mart Stores. The Motley Fool recommends Amazon.com. The Motley Fool owns shares of Amazon.com.

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