• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, January 22, 2002

Finally a Final

Yet another 2001 retail sales picture, but claiming to be "the final one!" Truly an over-reported data collection, but a benchmark for the future planners and prognosticators.

EMarketer summarized a recent report from comScore Networks, showing that $53.07 billion was generated in 2001 in online consumer sales at US retail websites with $33.7 billion coming from non-travel related websites.

OnLine Consumer Sales in millions of dollars

	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4
Non-travel	$7.76	7.59	7.57	10.80
Travel	3.73	4.89	5.74	5.00

Source:comScore, January, 2002

comScore measures e-retail sales by continuously monitoring the online browsing and buying activity of a cross-section of 1.5 million Internet users. comScore also reports that people shopping online from work spent more money in 2001 than those who bought online from home or from college.

Average Monthly Online Expenditure by Buyer in 2001

From work	$229
From home	$165
From college/university	$146

Source: comScore, Jan.,2002

comScore's non-travel online sales total of $10.8 billion for Q4 closely mirrors the eMarketer projection, released in November 2001. Some research firms like Jupiter and Forrester, include travel in their total, and define the "holiday season" as two months and the last five weeks of the year, respectively.

Comparative Estimates 4th Q, 2001
in billions of dollars

AC Nielsen*	$12.40
JupiterMM*	11.90
Gartner G2*	11.86
BizRate.com	11.55
Forrester*	11.00
EMarketer	10.70
ComScore	10.80

*includes travel
Source:various/eMarketer

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