E-Commerce: Evidence Sales Plunged After Christmas

You’ve got plenty of “roundups” and tallies of shopping to choose from at this point in the year, but the more you read them, the less appealing the headlines are. Last week came word from research firm comScore (SCOR), which tracks Web users’ activity, that sales from Nov. 1 through Dec. 21–in other words, through the last weekend before Christmas–had fallen one percent. Then came Wednesday’s report from comScore that for Nov. 1 through the day before Christmas eve, Dec. 23, sales fell three percent, and that when extended through Dec. 28, they fell four percent.

Now comes word from privately backed Mercent of Seattle, Wash., that online sales surged 80 percent on the 22nd and 23rd versus 2007, and then fell sharply after Christmas.

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