Online retailer Amazon has reported that, despite the current economic doom and gloom, they saw a profit increase of 9% in the last 3 months of 2008 and on their busiest day of the season they handled a massive 1.4 million orders.
Online spending certainly took precedence over the high street with around £4.7 billion being spent online this festive period, and despite the economic downturn IMRG reports that the number of people making transactions online during December rose 28%, but overall the transaction values were less. This further supports eDigitalResearch findings that more people used the internet to research and monitor their purchases, and smart shoppers taking advantage of the early ‘Boxing Day’ sales led to an increase in traffic and transactions in the immediate run up to Christmas Day.
These figures of course only reconfirm what we already know, that shoppers are in fact turning to the internet to shop for the bargains, however, before they are parting with their cash they are looking around, researching the product and monitoring the prices; a fact which every retailer must consider as we venture even further into the economic crisis.
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