• September 19, 2000

Online spending this holiday season will double last year's total, reaching $10 billion. According to a new Technographics Brief from Forrester Research, Inc., one-third of all Internet users will buy on the Web between Thanksgiving and New Year's.

"As the holidays get closer and parking spaces become more scarce, 16.6 million US households will opt to visit websites instead of battling traffic at the local mall. This amounts to 66% more online shoppers than last holiday season," said Christopher M. Kelley, analyst at Forrester. "Experienced Web users will drive household shopping this year -- pushing the average spending for holiday-buying households to $603."

Despite consumers spending $10 billion online in the last five weeks of 2000, Web retailers whose marketing efforts didn't produce the traffic and dollars they hoped for will shut their doors and join the growing list of defunct Dot Coms. Amid all the stress and anger, however, consumers will continue shopping online. This will result in a 2001 that will see 23.3 million Web buyers in the US and more than $64 billion in online spending.