This holiday, the Web is continuing to play an ever-greater role in consumer's shopping, according to research released Wednesday by comScore Networks. From Nov. 1 through Dec. 3, online spending rose
to $12.42 billion--up 25 percent year-over-year. The number of consumers who made purchases grew 17 percent, while dollars spent per consumer increased by 7 percent. Spending on video games, jewelry
and watches and event tickets all represent particularly strong retail categories this year, according to comScore. In addition, search engines last week drove about 26% of traffic to shopping
sites--an increase of 6.3% from a year ago. Notably, home shopping is growing by 30% year-over-year, while the shopping consumers do from work is growing by 19%. comScore attributes this trend to
increased home broadband penetration over the last year.
