Total Non-Travel E-commerce Sales Hit $24 Billion in Q1, Estimates comScore Networks
Tuesday, 30 May 2006
comScore Networks on May 26 announced that its first quarter 2006 e-commerce sales estimates, originally published in early April 2006, accurately predicted the data published by the US Department of Commerce the previous week.
The Commerce Department reported total US non-travel online spending at $24.5 billion for the first quarter of 2006. comScore’s previously published non-travel online spending figure was $23.9 billion for the first quarter of 2006, representing a year-over-year growth rate of 22 percent.
The comScore e-commerce data were available to comScore clients and widely published in early April, while the US Department of Commerce did not release its estimates until Friday, May 19.
comScore’s data has exhibited remarkable consistency with the Department of Commerce estimates over the course of the past five years. Dating back to the first quarter of 2001, the past 21 quarters of comScore’s online spending figures have accurately predicted the Department of Commerce reports by just 3 percent in total.
“The fact that the comScore data has been validated to accurately predict the official Commerce Department numbers that are published approximately five weeks later provides a vital benefit to marketers by allowing them to obtain the fastest reading possible of the key trends in consumers’ online spending by relying on the comScore estimates,” said Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore Networks.
Fulgoni continued, “If, as we expect, e-commerce spending continues to grow at a rate in excess of 20 percent for the balance of the year, online spending for 2006 will eclipse the $100 billion threshold for the first time. The growth in consumers’ online buying during the past five years has been quite remarkable, with e-commerce now well integrated into Americans’ shopping behavior.”
Rather than asking consumers to try to remember the details of their past purchases (which few consumers are able to accurately recall), comScore’s sales data is based on the passive, electronic measurement of actual online browsing and buying activity of a representative and massive cross-section of more than 2 million Internet users.
These consumers have given comScore permission to confidentially monitor their browsing and buying behavior using comScore's proprietary data collection technology. The buying activity of this massive sample is measured at more than 50,000 online merchants and other commerce sites across the Web and then statistically projected to represent the entire online marketplace.