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Annual growth among online retailers continued to outpace the growth seen by brick-and-mortar merchants during the 2012 holiday season. In fact, year-over-year growth in both sales and transaction volume was more than three times higher among e-commerce retailers, according to our Chase Holiday Pulse, which aggregates payment processing data from 50 of the largest U.S. e-commerce merchants. Retailers experienced a continued downward trend in average ticket prices, with season-to-date prices down nearly 8 percent compared to last year. This dichotomy between a rise in sales volume and a decline in ticket prices is a pattern to watch in the year ahead.

Behind all of these numbers are three trends to follow this year.

First, the 2012 holiday shopping season was the initial year e-commerce retailers witnessed the “Online Shopping Continuum,” where typical peak shopping days — such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday and even Christmas Eve, which continue to be significant moments for brick-and-mortar merchants — morphed into a week-long phenomenon. During the week following Black Friday, for instance, retailers saw strong online sales volume growth, powered by additional incentives on the days following Cyber Monday, such as time-sensitive, around-the-clock coupons and special offers. This is a continuation of the urgency mechanism that many retailers implement during key shopping days.

What had traditionally been secluded to a 24-hour period became week-long shopping, dubbed “Cyber Week.” For the seven-day period after Black Friday, the Chase Holiday Pulse revealed that year-over-year sales increased by nearly 23 percent. This could be a contributing factor to the continued decline in average ticket prices as consumers are shopping more frequently, purchasing in increments rather than in bulk, purchasing fewer or less expensive items or taking advantage of extended promotions. Interestingly, consumer spending tapered down the weekend following Cyber Week, with year-over-year sales growth rates declining by nearly 18 percent.

The Chase Holiday Pulse also reported 38 percent sales growth between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, potentially fueled by extended retailer price reductions and the rise of mobile commerce that provided more flexible real-time shopping over the weekend.

Second, we saw a rise in online sales during what the analysts called “Green Week” (Dec. 10-17), which was the busiest seven-day period of the holiday shopping season in terms of transaction volume this year. Online merchants saw high shopping volume — year-over-year sales and transaction for the same period were up nearly 11 percent and 17 percent respectively — throughout the week as responsible consumers acted to utilize free delivery offers before the holidays.

Finally, the powerful comparison shopping behavior known as “showrooming” played an outsized role thanks to the growth of the mobile smartphone. Showrooming, which is when consumers use brick-and-mortar stores to survey and compare products and then ultimately buy those products online through a phone, tablet or computer, potentially from a competitor, has pushed retailers to match online prices and enhance their in-store customer service. But there’s no reason to believe this phenomenon is a passing fad. Forty-three percent of U.S. adults admitted to participating in showrooming, according to a November 2012 poll from Harris Interactive.

The conclusion of the 2012 holiday shopping season suggests continued demand for e-commerce shopping in 2013. Continued growth in both sales and transaction volume, driven by extended periods of strong sales, the increased use of mobile technology and the emergence of showrooming, made for a record season for online retailers across the country. The aggregated power of these trends helped drive the 2012 holiday shopping season. As the online retail industry continues to grow — adapting to new technology trends and consumer behaviors — there is reason to be optimistic for a healthy economy in 2013.

Chase Paymentech, a subsidiary of J.P. Morgan Chase (JPMC), is a leading provider of payment processing and merchant acquiring. The company’s proprietary platforms enable integrated solutions for all payment types, including credit, debit, prepaid stored value and electronic check processing, as well as digital, alternative and mobile payment options. In 2011, Chase Paymentech processed 24.4 billion transactions with a value of $553.7 billion, including an estimated half of all global Internet transactions.

While the move was controversial — and still ruffles some merchants’ feathers — the fact is, it seems to be working.

In the company’s earnings call on Tuesday, Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora said, “Our core business is strong and investments in mobile and shopping this holiday season passed with flying colors. … Search performed well during Cyber Monday and Black Friday. We saw a greater proportion of queries with commercial intent.

Google offered some anecdotal evidence on how well the new business is performing, but clearly holiday shoppers did some good in boosting one of the company’s key metrics.

Arora reported that Front End Audio, which sells recording and live-sound equipment, said that sales resulting from their ads quickly made up 15 percent of the company’s revenue within weeks of launching. Further, the company reported that its click-through rates tripled and product conversions increased by 75 percent to 80 percent.

If only a portion of Google Shopping retailers are seeing those kinds of results, that could translate into meaningful ad revenue for the search giant, especially during peak times like the holidays.

During the fourth quarter, Google said its cost-per-click business increased 2 percent compared to the prior quarter, reversing a long period of declines. (The business was still down from the previous year, however.)

In a note to investors, Citi analyst Neil Doshi said he was expecting some improvements due to policy changes that Google made in regards to click arbitrage from its partner sites. He also believed that some uptick came from improvements in mobile rates.

But based on third-party research, the official October launch of Google Shopping clearly played a role.

Seattle-based Mercent, which provides retailers with tools to help them compete on Amazon and Google, said CPC rates increased to 70 cents per click on Google Shopping in December, up from roughly 55 cents in November. In June, it was less than half as much, or closer to 30 cents.

Mercent’s data is based on its customer base, which consists of 70 retailers using Google Shopping, including 1-800-Flowers, REI and Office Depot.

Indeed, Google’s efforts in the space are still in their infancy.

By its own count, it has tens of thousands of merchants participating in the platform and more than one billion products listed. Even Amazon is participating, despite it being one of the big holdouts. It buys product ads for the Kindle.

During the earnings call, analysts peppered Google’s Larry Page with questions about Google Shopping, but he mostly dodged them, especially when they were related to future product launches.

“I think that we are at the early stages of that. We just rolled out Google Shopping and we’ve seen tremendous uptake from merchants and users,” he said.

In response to a question about whether Google will enable consumers to pay or check-out within Google Shopping, Page said: “I’d expect the ease of buying things will improve over time, but I won’t comment on details. We are always focused on making our user experience better.”

Last month in an interview with AllThingsD, Sameer Samat, Google Shopping’s VP of product management, did clarify that the company has no aspirations to compete with merchants directly, even though the experience is starting to look more like a traditional e-commerce site.

“We aren’t planning on being a retailer,” he said. “We don’t view being a retailer right now as the right decision.”

Google justifies charging for Google Shopping because of the investments it has made over the past several months. It has completely overhauled the shopping experience, stressing product images over text and allowing consumers to easily conduct price comparisons across numerous sites.

The purpose of the efforts is to close the gap between it and Amazon as a starting point on the Web for shopping. Analysts estimate that 30 percent of consumers start their research on Amazon, whereas 13 percent of consumers start on Google.

In a memo to investors, Wells Fargo Analyst Matt Nemer wrote that, for the first time in years, Amazon is giving some customers coupons for 10 percent off this holiday. Nemer hypothesizes that there are two logical explanations for the promotion: Either the e-commerce giant is trying to get customers active again or holiday sales are tracking below expectations.

Yesterday, comScore, which tracks online spending from computers using landline broadband connections, reported that so far this holiday, spending is up 13 percent year over year, which is below its 2012 prediction of 17 percent.

Nemer also offers a plausible explanation for why sales are slow: Procrastination. “As Amazon’s base of Prime users continues to grow, customers will be more likely to delay purchases,” he wrote.

An Amazon spokesman declined to comment.

On Tuesday, Amazon gave customers even more reasons to wait. It announced that orders can be placed through Dec. 18 and still get free delivery in time for Christmas. In particular, Amazon Prime members, who pay $79 a year for free two-day delivery, can wait even longer. They can place orders until 7 pm ET on Dec. 21 to receive deliveries by Dec. 24. In some cases, Amazon will offer one-, two-, or even same-day delivery for a small fee.

ComScore chairman Gian Fulgoni said there is perhaps less urgency than there once was to make those final purchases. “What we’ve seen over the past few years is a tendency for heavy spending to continue late into the week of Green Monday (Dec. 10) and right up until Free Shipping Day, which this year falls on December 17,” he said in a release.

Quirky names have been given to several days around the holidays.

“Free Shipping Day” tends to be a widely celebrated event, with dozens of e-tailers offering to cover postage during a 24-hour period. However, the prominence of the day is wearing off as more online retailers offer free shipping year-round. On “Green Monday,” which is the second Monday of December, sales reached $1.275 billion, up 13 percent over last year, according to comScore. At that level, the day ranks as the third heaviest online spending day in 2012. So far this year, spending has totaled $29.3 billion during the first 40 days of the holiday shopping season, representing a 13 percent jump over last year.

At San Francisco’s Westfield mall, PayPal tells customers that is now accepted at a handful of retailers.

While that’s lower than what comScore was originally predicting, Hill Ferguson, PayPal’s VP of Global Product, said he’s seeing no indication that sales are falling below expectations.

In general, he said, the trend is for shopping to start earlier and end later, with the peak shopping days being closer to Christmas, rather than the more prominent heavy days, like Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) or Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving).

He attributes that shift, in part, to consumers shopping on their mobile devices. ”So much of shopping is generated by promotions, but with mobile you can make a purchase whenever or wherever you are, so people are willing to wait and not change their lives around what retailers are offering,” he said.

For instance, on Dec. 2, PayPal reported its global mobile payment volume hit a new high, exceeding its record set only six days earlier on Cyber Monday. PayPal’s parent company, eBay, saw its biggest mobile shopping day on Dec. 9.

Here’s a snapshot of the weekly trends for the past four years, showing how spending ramps up as we get closer to Christmas:

Leap Commerce is hoping to create a place where consumers can go to ask questions and get answers from experts on all kinds of products. “There’s an entirely new evolution around how people are considering or are thinking about purchasing items,” said Amit Chatterjee, Leap’s CEO and co-founder.

He said people are increasingly deliberate when it comes to buying mid-range items, like a dress, a stereo or a refrigerator. It’s not quite a car, but it’s more than picking up a tube of toothpaste. In today’s world, he believes reviews are not enough — you want “consideration from friends, or a buddy.”

While many companies are trying to crack the code on social commerce — and most have failed — Leap Commerce has another spin on the concept, with a lot of its expertise coming from Facebook engineers. Last year, Chatterjee co-founded the company with Karel Baloun, one of the first senior engineers to join Facebook in 2005. He is now Leap’s CTO. Leap’s head of products, Kent Schoen, also worked at the social network, spending five years on product management, marketing and operations for Facebook ads.

On Black Friday, Leap Commerce launched the latest iteration of its shopping app, called Spark.

The application, which is available on iPhone and iPad, is strikingly similar to its first app, Best Decision, except for the ability to get advice from friends and experts. It allows you to search across many e-commerce players by aggregating sites like Amazon and Gilt Groupe. While there’s no shortage of items to browse, the experience is a little clumsy since full-sized product pages from around the Web are scaled down and embedded into the app. To make it easier, however, items can be added to one universal shopping cart, where they can be purchased quickly.

Chatterjee says where the app really shines is in providing a fun, collaborative shopping experience where crowds can chat about some of their favorite items, making it very similar to Quora, the question-and-answer site. For example, he said, if you are considering buying a pair of skinny jeans, you can bring in images and tags from the product inventory, and you can say, “I prefer this pair for the following reasons.” Others can quickly vote up or down, and there are 16 emoticons that allow users to provide quick feedback without having to type a lot.

It’s still early days, but since launching the day after Thanksgiving, Chatterjee said, 2,000 questions have been asked, including 167 in the past 36 hours. He said the goal of Spark is to reduce shopping cart abandonment, since consumers will feel more confident about making purchases. Initially, Leap plans to monetize the app through affiliate fees, but eventually, Chatterjee said, they will have enough data to provide insights on users to brands, which can also propose questions about products on the site to get consumer feedback.

While I have already spelled out a number of reasons why he might be let go, here’s one reason why he should stay: On Black Friday, Groupon said it saw almost twice the purchase rate of its previous busiest day on record.

Call it an early present for Mason, who also learned yesterday that he is keeping his job as CEO — at least, for now.

This year, Groupon is putting an especially heavy emphasis on holiday gifts, after launching physical goods on the site more than a year ago. While coupons for restaurants and spas also sell well this time of year, physical gifts are more traditionally considered presents.

Yesterday, Groupon said its physical products division, Groupon Goods, celebrated its biggest four-day weekend since the program’s inception. Put another way, over the seven days after Thanksgiving in North America, Groupon generated double the gross billings from last year, with essentially all of the growth attributable to Groupon Goods, according to Yipit, a third-party data provider.

Top sellers included customizable photo books, iPhone cases, Topaz earrings and flying toy helicopters, which sold 43,000, 40,000, 42,000 and 11,000 units, respectively.

While an increase in sales is always a good thing, Groupon has received some static about its entrance into selling physical goods, which have thinner margins than local deals. It also means entering an extremely competitive landscape with well-established players, like Walmart and Amazon, although clearly it has demonstrated it can sell thousands of items fairly easily.

At least two promotions helped Groupon see a huge spike in the sale of Goods over the weekend. Yipit said that following Thanksgiving, the homepage redirected visitors to Groupon.com/goods (although it’s back to directing people to their local markets). Additionally, Groupon rolled out Grouponicus, the company’s third annual wintertime promotion, which offers customers gift ideas. For the first time this year, it offered a holiday toy catalog and free shipping and returns.

Groupon’s close competitor LivingSocial, which is facing its own turmoil, also saw a lift this year during the Thanksgiving week, although not as much since it’s still in the early days of building out its products division. In North America, for the week following Thanksgiving, Yipit said LivingSocial revenues jumped 30 percent. In particular, Yipit said sales from products were up roughly 5 percent, with a bump over the past few days coming from a partnership with Fab.com. (Separately, Fab said today it averaged $933,500 in daily sales for a week straight).

Still, one thing on Mason’s wish list that he has not received is a higher stock price. While shares were trading higher recently on news that he might be replaced, shares are now down 8.8 percent, or 40 cents, to trade at $4.14 a share.

Or next to nothing: IBM said social sites generated a mere .34 percent of all online sales. Referral traffic to retailers from social sites was also just about zero: IBM said Facebook only accounted for .68 percent of visits to retail sites, while Twitter had a giant goose egg.

Can’t be, right? Those are huge platforms. Surely IBM got its numbers wrong, via some sort of technical or statistical oversight.

If so, you’d think that Facebook or Twitter might want to publicly dispute those stats, since they poke a hole in their “buy our ads, use our services, and sell more stuff” pitch.

But so far neither company has said anything in public about IBM’s Black Friday numbers. Just to be sure, I checked with PR reps for both companies this week: Nada.

Instead of debating the numbers themselves, people who are sympathetic to Twitter and Facebook are making a different point: IBM is measuring the wrong thing.

Here’s the latest version of that argument, via social media analytics start-up DataSift, which says that the IBM study is “wrong,” because Twitter and Facebook “rocked Black Friday.”

But DataSift’s post doesn’t actually argue with IBM’s numbers. It just presents other numbers that show lots of people talking about stores and shopping.

It really is hard to believe that all that chatter didn’t result in more people clicking through to the stores themselves. So, perhaps future studies will figure out a more refined way of tracking that traffic, and Facebook and Twitter will have more favorable statistics to work with. Meantime, the IBM numbers are an ugly bit of coal both companies would like to ignore.

One standout measurement was the number of visitors coming to the crafts marketplace from mobile devices: It said that one-third of shoppers came from mobile, and that 30 percent of mobile visits came from tablets.

A blog post detailing the company’s holiday shopping highlights, however, did not once mention social networking, likely because there was little to share. Based on multiple third-party reports, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have contributed virtually zero in sales over Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

A year or more ago, mobile and social commerce were consistently mentioned in the same breath as two areas of potential growth for e-commerce. But as this holiday shopping season proceeds, it is clear that the two are not equal — so far, mobile is dominating. Social networking was a #noshow.

One clear reason for the disparity is that mobile phones and tablets are simply pocket- and purse-sized computers which allow consumers to shop wherever they are. In contrast, social commerce is more complicated. Consumers may discover new products through friends, or get advice via Facebook or Twitter, but being able to track those referrals back to where they came from is not always easy.

Additionally, sales that take place directly on social networks, as is the case with Facebook Gifts, are just starting to get off the ground.

According to the IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark, which tracks more than a million e-commerce transactions a day from 500 retailers nationwide, online sales increased 30.3 percent on Cyber Monday compared to last year. The tremendous spike was driven in part by the adoption of mobile devices.

In particular, IBM found that mobile sales reached close to 13 percent of overall transactions, increasing more than 96 percent over 2011. The iPad, specifically, generated more traffic than any other tablet or smartphone, driving more than 7 percent of online shopping. In contrast, sales coming from social networks actually decreased 26 percent year over year, generating only 0.41 percent of all online sales on Cyber Monday.

One note worth mentioning is that IBM does not track referrals from Pinterest, which, earlier this year, was on pace to become the most significant driver of social traffic to e-commerce sites — besting mature networks like Facebook and Twitter.

A study conducted by Adobe, which did take Pinterest into account, determined that social shopping had actually doubled year over year, representing 2 percent of total visits to e-commerce sites (that’s visits, not sales). According to the Adobe Digital Index, which tracks the majority of the top 20 online retailers, including Best Buy, eBay, Target and Walmart, Facebook and Twitter accounted for 77 percent of social networking traffic on Cyber Monday, Pinterest for 15 percent (up 105 percent year over year), while other sites contributed the remaining 8 percent.

It’s possible that e-commerce sites found it more valuable to focus on Pinterest this year, which would account for IBM seeing a decrease in referrals from traditional social networks. Still, social is obviously less mature. It will take awhile for it to achieve the kind of scale retailers need to move the needle. A recent report conducted by Booz & Co. suggests that revenue from physical goods sold on social networks will grow by 93 percent per year in the U.S., reaching $14 billion by 2015.

But the overall increase wasn’t as robust as last year’s. And some indicators showed a decline in spending at stores on Black Friday itself, leading to questions about whether retailers’ new tactics are simply shifting spending to different days and sales outlets.

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Venture capitalists often tell entrepreneurs that, beyond investing, a VC can provide a lot of value by giving advice or making valuable introductions.

Here’s one I hadn’t seen before: VCs promoting their portfolio companies to friends, families and associates as places to do their holiday shopping.

First Round Capital is launching a special site today, where more than two dozen of their investments are listing holiday deals for Cyber Monday. Companies participating include One Kings Lane, Kiwi Crate, Birchbox, Dog Vacay, Warby Parker, Fab.com, Threadflip and Hotel Tonight. The offers range from free shipping to $50 or 15 percent off, depending on the kind of products and services for sale.

First Round Capital is heavily invested in e-commerce, so it knows all too well what the holidays can mean to a young company trying to grow its revenue.

This year is promising to be a monster online shopping event, with record-setting days already taking place. The day after Thanksgiving, called Black Friday, turned into an online feeding frenzy, with consumers spending $1.04 billion, an increase of 26 percent over last year. Amazon saw the most action, as was expected, followed by Walmart, Best Buy, Target and Apple.

If First Round Capital’s companies can capture just a slice of that discretionary spending, it could mean a couple of good months to top off the year (which leads to higher valuations and happy investors). First Round Partner Josh Kopelman wrote a brief blog post directing people to visit the site, adding that the companies “will be shipping hundreds of thousands of products this holiday season to customers all over the world.” You can bet we’ll see other partners tweeting it, Facebooking it and sending it out via email, as well (not to mention tipping off the media).

According to yet another online shopping survey for the holiday shopping season, this one from comScore, people are buying a lot more online than last year.

I know this people-buying-stuff-online thing must come as a shock to those who have been living in a cave for several years now.

For those with an Internet connection, though, sales rose to $1.04 billion on Black Friday, an increase of 26 percent over last year. It is the first time that Web purchasing for the important retailing day was over $1 billion, with 57.3 million consumers visiting online stores.

The entire amount of 2012 online holiday spending from the beginning of November until now, according to comScore, has been $13.7 billion. It is a 16 percent rise, but still a drop in the bucket compared to bricks-and-mortar retailing.

But, according to a statement from a comScore guy, “We continue to see this shopping day become more and more prominent in the e-commerce channel — particularly among those who prefer to avoid crowds at the stores.”

People don’t like being jostled at a mall when they can sit at home and buy more things on a couch. Imagine that!

Amazon was where the most action was among online retailing, followed by Walmart, Best Buy, Target and Apple. Auction site eBay was excluded from this group.

And, if you can bear any more stats, here is a chart from ChannelAdvisor on online sales:

With all the hyped hullabaloo around just how mobile-icious we are this holiday season — yes, it’s up, but it is also a retailer-cooked trend that reporters grab onto amid the news drought of the Thanksgiving weekend — one of the many statistics spewed out by a variety of sources was rather interesting.

According to IBM, in a report titled “The iPad Factor”:

“The [Apple] iPad generated more traffic than any other tablet or smartphone, reaching nearly 10 percent of online shopping. This was followed by iPhone at 8.7 percent and [Google] Android 5.5 percent. The iPad dominated tablet traffic at 88.3 percent followed by the Barnes & Noble Nook at 3.1 percent, Amazon Kindle at 2.4 percent and the Samsung Galaxy at 1.8 percent.”

And, over at eBay and its PayPal unit — which spewed out all kinds of data on mobile transactions that showed volume was between two and three times greater, mostly on Apple devices — the company noted that one of its bestselling items on Black Friday was the iPad 2, selling 250 per hour from 12 am to 8 am PT.

That tracks on an earlier survey by Nielsen with 48 percent of U.S. children 6 to 12 years old asking for the iPad, followed by iPod touch (36 percent), iPad mini (36 percent) and iPhone (33 percent).

Presumably, which will be used to order more.

Here’s a lovely IBM chart explaining it all:

IBM Holiday Benchmark Infographic BF2012

The historical race between e-commerce retailers and their physical-store rivals continues. But in a new development, bricks-and-mortar retailers are turning the tables, using their websites to match rivals’ marquee discounts more aggressively than ever.

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Some analysts said yes. (For the record, we at AllThingsD are dubious. But, for the moment, we’re going to pretend that not spending dough on stuff is just like spending dough on stuff.)

Andrew Lipsman, an analyst at comScore, insisted there’s little distinction between whether consumers make the transaction on the phone or whether they later go home and make a purchase on a computer.

“It’s just the introduction of mobile devices into the brick-and-mortar environment that’s affecting consumer behavior,” Lipsman said.

According to recent comScore data, 37 percent of shoppers this past quarter displayed “showrooming” behavior — the act of price-checking using a mobile device while shopping in a traditional brick-and mortar-store. That’s compared with 32 percent of showrooming shoppers in the second quarter of the year. (Note to the math-challenged: This is a small increase, given the explosive growth of smartphones over the last year.)

But Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru echoed Lipsman’s statement in a recent blog post, noting: “Most of the showrooming shoppers told us that they usually find cheaper prices online when they research them … A lot of people switch retailers when they find cheaper prices online.”

It’s apparently not all bad news for brick-and-mortar, though. As Forrester’s Mulpuru pointed out, some research leads not only to Amazon.com, but to another store. About 18 percent of mobile shoppers surveyed opted to head to another store to make a purchase, while just 15 percent said they went online instead.

Key takeaway: We’ll buy lots of stuff in lots more ways.

Apparently, this is now a officially a thing, so here are some stats taken from the latest snapshot as of 3 pm ET, because we just know you’re not shopping on a tablet, you’re on the edge of your seat waiting to hear about how many others are:

• Online sales are up 20 percent for this same time period over Black Friday 2011.

• The number of consumers using a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site is at 28 percent, up from 18.1 percent in 2011.
• The number of consumers using their mobile device to make a purchase is 14.3 percent, up from 10.3 percent in 2011.
• Shoppers using the iPad led to more retail purchases more often per visit than other mobile devices, with conversion rates reaching 4.2 percent, higher than all other mobile devices.
• Shoppers referred from social networks like Facebook and Twitter generated 0.18 percent of all online sales on Black Friday.

So, you might be wondering how IBM gets all this info. It’s all part of its strategic play in the world of big data, essentially helping companies make more sense of the huge troves of data they’ve gathered that were previously being ignored. Smarter Commerce is the area of IBM devoted to helping retailers better understand that data so they can come up with improved ideas concerning how to sell more stuff.

Where they gather that data is the IBM Benchmark. It’s a cloud-based digital analytics platform that soaks up digital information about how consumers respond to different ways of selling things online, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all year long, from 500 different online retailers. IBM won’t name them — they joined the network under condition of anonymity — but Big Blue says the companies that participate include about half of the companies named on the Internet Retailer Top 100 list. A lot of the technology comes from Coremetrics and Unica, acquisitions IBM made in 2010.

Last year, I talked about all this with Craig Hayman, IBM’s VP of the WebSphere, Application and Integration Middleware Software Division of the IBM Software Group. One quote from that conversation sticks out in my memory; it bears repeating here:

“If you think about consumers, and you think about the amount of technology that they have at their hands, to reach out to read reviews and talk to friends and families, they’re incredibly empowered. There’s not one purchase decision that they make that is not impacted by some element of social networks. What does that do to the companies that have to deal with that by offering the best products and services, and you see companies are struggling to do that: To make the right offer at the right time with the right price. When they do it well, we all talk about how it went well; and when they do it badly, we talk about how annoying it was.”

Now you know. Not only are retailers and your credit card companies watching you shop, so is IBM.

In what has become an annual holiday tradition, those who keep track of these things have started in on touting just how digital the holiday shopper has become, whipping out all manner of buzzwords to do so.

Last year, it was Cyber Monday — this year, it’s turned out to be Mobile Thursday. What’s next? Social Network Saturday? Self-Driving Car Sunday? (We still have Black Friday, by the way, which is today.)

And, indeed, the Mobile Thursday phrase got some big laps around the track, with numerous online shopping surveys — coming out faster than you can buy that new tablet — using it in their flash reports yesterday and today.

This year’s anecdotal meme: Apple iPads go well with pumpkin pie.

What isn’t said so much is that it is still a very small number — though fast-growing — over the last few years, with overall sales reaching $500 million for Thursday, compared to about $1.2 billion on Monday, according to comScore.

Still, for now, no one seems to break out actual mobile sales figures, which are clearly still a fraction of the totals. But they are more than happy to tell you that people are certainly browsing on their mobile devices, which should come as a surprise to exactly no one who is tired of talking to the relatives about three hours into the day.

According to IBM’s Benchmark report, for example, online sales were up 17.4 percent over 2011 on Thanksgiving Day, noting that “big winners were retailers who connected customers with personalized deals across multiple screens including PCs, smartphones and tablets.”

Some stats from IBM about Thursday:

Mobile Traffic: The number of consumers using a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site reached 25.3 percent, up from 66.2 percent over 2011.

Mobile Shopping: The number of consumers using their mobile device to make a purchase increased to 18.3 percent, up 65.3 percent from 2011.

Mobile Email: Smartphone and tablet shoppers responded to email deals from retailers, with emails opened on mobile devices jumping 23 percent on Thanksgiving Day over 2011.

Couch Commerce: In the evening hours, consumers shifted from shopping through their smartphones at the dinner table to buying through their iPad on the couch. At the end of the day the iPad drove more retail traffic than any other device with traffic reaching 10.7 percent versus the iPhone at 9.1 percent and Android at 5.8 percent.

Social Shopping: Shoppers referred from Social Networks such as Facebook and Twitter increased in evening hours generating .63 percent of all online sales on Thanksgiving.

And today, Black Friday, IBM slightly upped those figures, noting that the iPhone was the preferred device to bring into a store to shop with — presumably irritating sales clerks everywhere.

Over at Fab, CEO Jason Goldberg was touting in a Betashop blog post that his mobile app sales were 40 percent of the retail site’s total for the day. It’s usually 33 percent, so it’s a small jump, which Goldberg attributed to a tweet by Apple promoting it. But how much did he sell? He’s not saying.

And eBay said it launched 20 mobile-only e-commerce promotions over its app, as did many other retailers.

Also, no surprise, the New York Times weighed in with the classic trend piece: “The Shrewd Shopper Carries a Smartphone.” Um, everyone carries a smartphone now, but it apparently gets more magical when you take it to Macy’s.

We’ll see if Mobile Thursday becomes Mobile Holiday Season, which would be a big deal — but it’s winning so far in the pundit stakes.

Until we get actual numbers, here’s a chart about the whole thing from eBay:

In a recent survey, more than half of U.S. consumers – 53 percent — said they would begin their shopping with Amazon.

In the proprietary survey conducted by Baird Equity Research, analyst Colin Sebastian said Google will be the second-most-popular initial destination (36 percent); eBay is the third (7 percent); and then it tapers off drastically from there, with Walmart.com in fourth place (2 percent).

Beyond tradition, there’s a good reason why consumers are drawn to the classics at this time of the year. Essentially, these sites are the shopping malls of the Internet, where just about anything can be found by plugging the name of a sought-after product — like the new Wii U or the Nexus 7 tablet — into a search box, and getting immediate results.

It’s worth noting that the “other” category in the survey totals 1 percent, which is fairly significant, since spending will hit $1 billion on big shopping days like Black Friday or Cyber Monday (the Friday and Monday after Thanksgiving). You can assume that a big portion of that will go toward nontraditional or boutique retailers, which aren’t focusing on search, but rather on curating a small inventory of products for people who may be having a hard time deciding what to buy. Some sites that do a really good job of this include the Daily Grommet, Fab.com, Groupon and OpenSky.

But, given that the bulk of the shopping starts with Amazon, Google and eBay, here’s a look at what each one brings to the dining-room table:

1. Amazon: The retailer benefits from the act of “showrooming.” Roughly 30 percent of smartphone users in the survey said they always or frequently compare prices of products in retail stores using a mobile device, and 75 percent are comparing prices in stores. Data from comScore suggests that mobile shoppers tend to favor apps for Amazon and eBay versus apps from particular retailers. The takeaway is that even if some people might shop in person, they could end up buying online.
2. Google Shopping: This year, Google has changed the way it accepts product feeds from retailers. Before, it was free, but now it is a paid experience. While retailers will have to budget for this change, they will be getting a lot for their money, including the ability to post large images — some in 3-D — that appear on the results page. Customers can easily sort across many sites (eBay, Wayfair, Newegg, etc.), looking for the retailer that has the best prices, free shipping and other features, like style, size or color. The results will not include Amazon’s products, however, as the company has declined to pay to play.
3. eBay: Like Amazon, it’s mobile, mobile, mobile for both eBay and its PayPal subsidiary. For all the people who don’t want to get off the couch and fight the crowds at the mall, the company is listing a variety of Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals exclusively on its mobile applications. Those deals will not be found if consumers visit eBay online.
4. Walmart.com: This holiday, the mega-offline-retailer wants to be more accessible online. It has started offering customers in four markets the chance to buy and receive items on the same day, for $10. It has launched “Walmart To Go” in Northern Virginia, Philadelphia and Minneapolis, and the San Jose-San Francisco area is coming in November. No minimum orders are required. EBay has done the same thing in San Francisco, and Sebastian found in his survey that 70 percent of consumers would be willing to pay $5 to $10 for the service.

If you are going to brave the stores or even shop online, don’t be a turkey. Arm yourself with some backup. And by backup, I don’t mean a can of pepper spray. There are a number of apps that can help you sort through the various deals, compare prices, compile coupons and more. Below, you’ll find five such apps, and to help kick-start your savings, all the ones I’ve chosen are free.

Happy shopping, and good luck!

Black Friday by FatWallet
Platform: iOS 5 or later
This app makes it easy from the get-go, with a simple interface that lets you search by store or category. It includes deals from more than 19,000 retailers and products, from Best Buy to Old Navy, from toys to electronics.

When you select an item, the app shows you more details about the sale. From there, you can also save the product to a Favorites list (though this requires registering with FatWallet), and if the item is available for purchase online, you can simply tap the “Shop now” icon to be taken directly to the retailer’s Web site. Black Wallet also provides scans of retailer ads, including coupons.

There are more advanced options, too. For example, you can search for products that qualify for free shipping, and opt to receive notifications whenever a store posts a new deal.

Black Friday Deals by Shopular
Platform: Android 2.2 or later
Coupons are a great way to save money. But clipping them out and remembering to bring them with you can be a nuisance (it is for me, anyway). Shopular’s app eases that pain by compiling mobile coupons that you can use in stores.

It will even surface deals based on your location. As soon as it detects that you’re in a mall, the app will display any relevant deals. The developer says it covers 700 malls across the U.S., and uses cell towers and Wi-Fi rather than GPS whenever possible to find your location, in order to save battery life.

One thing to note: This may not be the best app if you’re looking for electronics. Black Friday Deals largely lists coupons from clothing stores, such as Gap and H&M. But it does include some Black Friday ads from other retailers like Target, Walmart and GameStop.

Black Friday App by Dealnews.com
Platform: iOS 4.3 or later, Android 1.6 or later
Like FatWallet’s Black Friday, this app allows you to search for deals by store or category. Its interface isn’t quite as slick as FatWallet’s, but what’s nice is that it offers price comparisons when possible. Some might find this useful, others might think it’s annoying.

I found that the app also pulls prices for similar items. For example, when trying to compare prices for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet, it also pulled in prices for the seven-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab and Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1.

All deal hunting doesn’t have to be done on the small screen. You can visit the Dealnews Web site and save items to “My List,” which you can then later access on your smartphone or tablet. But it does require creating an account. New sales are constantly added under the Deals tab in both the iOS and Android versions.

Zoomingo
Platform: iOS 4.3 or later, Android 2.2 or later
Zoomingo aims to make the shopping experience a little more personal by only presenting local deals. When you first start up the app, it will ask you to enter your ZIP code. From there, you can search for products by general categories, such as men, women, home and electronics, and the app will then show stores in your area that carry the item.

Zoomingo also provides information about store hours, and displays a map. It’s a nicely done app with a visually appealing user interface.

Amazon Mobile
Platform: iOS 4.3 or later, Android (varies with device), Windows Phone 7 or later
I wanted to get an app in for the Windows Phone users. Truth be told, it’s slim pickings out there for Black Friday-specific titles, but Amazon Mobile is a good one for any time of the year.

There is a Black Friday Deals Week section, where you can see the Deal of the Day, Lightning Deals and Best Deals. In addition to finding products by category or name, you can also use your smartphone’s camera to scan a bar code or take a photo of a book, DVD, CD or videogame to conduct searches.

Like the Web site, the mobile app offers price comparisons, customer reviews and similar items, as well as the option to buy.

Additionally, the company said it is planning on restocking store shelves by Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, in time for the holiday rush. Inventory sold out quickly in most stores after it went on sale on Sunday. (In other words, long waits in the store and time-consuming updates at home before a game can be played.)

In response to questions about long wait times for mandatory system updates, Nintendo issued the following statement:

It may take an hour or more to perform the system update — the time required depends on the speed of your Internet connection. Powering off the console during the update may damage your system. The update enables numerous features including Miiverse, Wii U Chat and the eShop, which provides the ability to download video-on-demand applications.

On Sunday, customers reported on Twitter and Facebook that they are experiencing long waits for mandatory software updates, with download times reaching as much as four or five hours. Other customers noted how long it took to flip between applications and to load messages in Miiverse, the gaming console’s social network.

Overall, the game launch has not gone as smoothly as the videogame company would have liked. In addition to the large updates, Nintendo had to push out the launch of other core features of the console, including its own TVii service, which allows customers to access their TV guide from the GamePad controller and to change the channel from their set-top box. Those services won’t be available until December, possibly still in time for those who hope to give or receive the console on Christmas morning.

In the physical retail world, it’s the equivalent of putting up Christmas displays and piping in carols over the sound system before Thanksgiving, maybe even before Halloween.

This year, e-tailers are jumping the gun in an effort to get a bigger share of your wallet by announcing sales as much as a week before such traditionally heavy online shopping days as Black Friday and Cyber Monday (the Friday and Monday following Thanksgiving, respectively).

Two of the biggest retailers in the U.S. are exemplifying this trend with rival releases this morning:

Walmart said today that it is kicking off Cyber Week this year on Saturday, Nov. 24, and lasting through Sunday, Dec. 2. Specials will be available online and refreshed daily, with customers enjoying free shipping on more than 100,000 items. Meanwhile, Amazon said its Black Friday deals are starting today and running through Saturday. “We’re offering customers our widest selection of Black Friday Lightning Deals ever and we’re bringing doorbuster deals to shoppers earlier this year,” said Ben Hartman, Amazon’s VP of consumer electronics.

There are signs that consumers are responding to the early offers:

• PayPal, which claims to process nearly one-fifth of global e-commerce, said today that the official U.S. shopping season started as early as Sept. 30.
• Fab.com said today that sales from its 2012 holiday shopping are up 400 percent versus its holiday business this time a year ago.
• Chase Holiday Pulse data, which tracks data from 50 large e-commerce retailers, is finding that year-over-year sales volume is up 12.3 percent over 2011. Some days, like Nov. 11, were up more than 50 percent.

But many of the busiest days are yet to come. UPS is preparing for Thursday, Dec. 20, when the logistics company estimates it will deliver 28 million packages around the world, compared to its average day of 15.8 million packages. This holiday is expected to be a record-breaking year for UPS, which is forecasting that it will deliver 527 million packages between Thanksgiving and Christmas, surpassing last year’s total of 480 million.

Chain stores prefer impulse-purchase-prone store shoppers. Yet sales growth during the busy Thanksgiving weekend more often is coming from Internet shoppers like Melanie Cortese.

Going to Woodbridge Center Mall with her mom on Black Friday was a family tradition for Ms. Cortese, a 37-year-old New Jersey mother of two. But no longer: she plans to go to bed on Thanksgiving night with a laptop nearby and wake up on Back Friday to shop online instead.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

I’m told Facebook is set to unveil a series of new partnerships with more retailers, bolstering the social giant’s gifting platform with more item choices for users to send one another. As it stands today, Facebook already has more than 100 retail partners for Gifts across industries such as food, fashion and kids’ toys.

But meanwhile, back in start-up land, myriad smaller social gifting companies are shifting into high gear with product updates and partner announcements of their own, hoping to keep out in front of the pack while the spectre of Facebook’s e-commerce play looms.

The most popular defense I’ve seen thus far? Trying to differentiate from Facebook, the 800-pound gorilla in the room.

I’m thinking of two start-ups in particular, Wrapp and Boomerang, which are focused on a market that Facebook isn’t fully immersed in: Digital gift cards. Wrapp and Boomerang users can give gift cards to their friends for free, made available through partnerships between retailers and the respective start-ups.

Both Wrapp and Boomerang offer similar value proposition stories: It’s good for users because you’re able to dole out freebies to your friends. And while retailers may have to eat five or 10 bucks on a free gift card, the potential for drumming up more foot traffic in their brick-and-mortar stores is worth the low upfront cost.

Right now, Facebook partners with only a handful of retailers to offer digital gift cards (though one of those, Starbucks, is a heavy hitter). Instead, Facebook’s focus is on physical retailers, those which tout more traditional mail-order presents like stuffed animals and cookie bouquets.

The problem is, there’s no guarantee that Facebook won’t flip a switch and decide to offer a similar service. In theory, all Facebook would have to do is hammer out a bunch of partnership deals with retailers who offer gift cards, and slot those into the list of choices Facebook users have when selecting gifts for their friends.

Whether Facebook goes that route or not, it’s possible that this isn’t a zero-sum game. Facebook could continue chasing the long tail of smaller, physical good retailers, like it seems to be doing currently. At the same time, companies like Wrapp, Boomerang, Gyft and Treater can handle the digital gift card market by tackling larger retail partnerships with national chains.

But the smaller guys aren’t taking any chances, keeping up momentum in the final days before holiday shopping madness is upon us. Wrapp is pushing out a larger wave of free gift cards from big brands like the Gap and Sephora the day before Black Friday, and announced a recent partnership with Blackhawk Network, essentially expanding Wrapp’s prepaid gift card cache by upward of 300 retailers.

We’ll have to wait and see what Thursday’s “Gifts” event will bring. The new partnerships may signal Facebook’s direction for Gifts, or perhaps the company will debut a surprise feature or acquisition to change up expectations entirely.

It’s sort of like staring at wrapped presents under the tree on Christmas Eve. The hardest part is always the waiting.

“In the next 12 to 24 months, I think to survive and to compete against Amazon, they will have to leverage the store in a way that they thought they never could,” said Chris Saridakis, the president of GSI Commerce.

The eBay-owned company powers Web sites for such retailers as Calvin Klein, Levi’s, Sports Authority and Radio Shack. It does everything from taking pictures of the company’s inventory to coming up with marketing strategies to shipping the orders.

Saridakis said one of the big trends this holiday season is to use technology to tie together both the virtual and physical shopping experiences — something that is increasingly being referred to as “bricks and clicks.”

“One of the biggest trends this year is how do we help our clients take the inventory in the stores and connect it digitally,” he said. “What’s the best way for that local store to ship out the item instead of the distribution center? Or the best way for a consumer to pick it up, so they potentially buy more items? We are leveraging the physical store by using technology that was meant for the online site.”

Last year, he said, Toys “R” Us experimented with connecting the two channels, and more retailers, like Dick’s Sporting Goods, are implementing it this year. The efforts will be supported by advertising campaigns that will send people to buy online or have items shipped to the home from the store. Shipping from the store — and not the distribution center — has a number of benefits: It’s cheaper because the merchandise will be sent through fewer zones, but also it leverages retail employees who can put downtime to use packing and shipping items. “Thirdly, you’ve actually increased satisfaction because a customer will receive the package in a day, or two days, at the latest,” he said.

This holiday season, Chase Paymentech says, retailers are expecting 51 percent of their holiday sales to come from online, and 45 percent of the retailers are expecting to see a lift in e-commerce sales over last year. The study surveyed 178 retailers in September.

The retailers’ efforts to create a cross-channel approach come a year after Amazon launched a controversial one-day promotion that gave consumers up to $5 off on purchases if they compared prices using the online giant’s mobile phone application in a store. The idea was to encourage consumers to treat local stores as showrooms.

Saridakis said that it showed that Amazon was going to try and come up with something that will challenge the industry, and that retailers should be on alert. “It awoke a giant, and not one, but many giants,” he said. GSI mostly works with very large retailers, but in conjunction with eBay, it is trying to provide tools to small- and medium-size retailers, too. “I’m not sure how the numbers worked for [Amazon's promotion],” he said, adding that it was “a warning shot across the bow to everyone.”

Clearly, the online channel is worth fighting for. Even though it still makes up only about 10 percent of overall sales, Saridakis said, it spikes during the holidays. For most of its clients, a normal day means that 8 percent to 10 percent of revenues occur online, but on peak holidays, it will hit 16 percent to 20 percent. “Many clients do more business online on Cyber Monday or Black Friday than they do across all of their physical stores combined. Last year, we had two to three clients cross over the line, but this year we’ll have a lot more.”

Daily deal industry tracking firm Yipit reports that the daily deal industry in North America experienced marginal growth in November, as the major sites were adversely affected by the Thanksgiving holiday.

The number of deals offered increased only 1 percent while total industry gross billings grew by 2 percent during the month.

The largest provider, Groupon, saw the biggest decline.

Groupon grew 6 percent in November, but experienced a double-digit decline during the Thanksgiving holiday week.

Yipit bases its estimates on the sales of vouchers, which it tracks closely. Although Groupon no longer reveals exact sales data on its site, Yipit maintains that it is still able to make fair predictions based on historical data and industry insights.

The daily-deal declines were in stark contrast to the Black Friday experience of online retailers, which saw sales increase to $816 million on the day after Thanksgiving. ComScore said it was the heaviest online spending day to date in 2011, representing a 26 percent increase over the same day in 2010.

The holiday declines occurred despite ambitious programs by both Groupon and LivingSocial, which tried to take advantage of the heavy retail season.

Groupon stepped up its marketing efforts through “Grouponicus,” a holiday shop selling local gifts, deals and travel getaways.

LivingSocial’s Black Friday efforts included offering deals for 20 national brands, including gift cards from Electronic Arts, OfficeMax, Verizon Wireless, Skype and BlueNile.com. LivingSocial even launched a national TV campaign and radio spots to promote the deals.

But Yipit says those efforts didn’t pay off.

For the seven-day period ended Nov. 28, LivingSocial’s gross billings were down 30 percent and 19 percent compared to the two previous periods. And, because of the lower-priced national deals, the average size of its deal price fell to $28 in November from $32 a month earlier.

Yipit did not try to explain why the drops occurred around the holidays, except that they are similar to other periods, such as the Fourth of July.

But the patterns could be compared to social gaming space, which saw its usage sink during the holidays because people were not at work.

A secondary factor may be that more traditional retailers are known for Black Friday offers for others, while daily deals have historically been looked at as items you buy for yourself, and are not necessarily thought of as gifts.

Finally, Yipit said following Groupon and LivingSocial, Travelzoo, AmazonLocal and Google Offers ranked as the third, fourth and fifth largest national providers in November.

No word yet on how daily deals performed in the lead-up to Christmas in December.

The list is based on my own taste, and in no particular order, so feel free to share the ones that made you snicker the most.

Admittedly, they are much more bearable to watch now that the holidays are over and they no longer serve as a reminder for all of the things you have left to do.

So, sit back and enjoy!

Wal-Mart makes fun of the ugly Christmas sweater:

Target gets you into shape for fighting the crowds in its Black Friday commercial:

Apple, which was one of the biggest retail winners this holiday, demonstrated how Santa would use Siri:

EBay showed how its mobile application could avoid awkward gifting:

Best Buy fueled people’s competitive spirit in a game of Mom versus Santa:

And, finally, Amazon says it’s better to receive than give:

Either way, consumers barely waited until Santa got back to the North Pole before hitting up the stores again.

ComScore reports that e-commerce spending for the first 48 days of the holiday season — ended Dec. 19 — reached $32 billion, jumping 15 percent over last year. In one week alone, at least four individual days surpassed the $1 billion mark.

And IBM, which analyzes mobile shopping trends using data from 500 retailers nationwide, said shoppers continued pulling out their credit cards on Christmas Day, as they shopped for themselves after shopping for others.

IBM found that on Dec. 25, online sales grew by 16.4 percent over Christmas Day 2010. (IBM’s results do not include Amazon.com, the Internet’s largest e-tailer.)

Many of the online sessions on a retailer’s site were initiated from a mobile device, accounting for 18.3 percent of traffic, up from 8.4 percent last year. Mobile sales grew to 14.4 percent versus 5.3 percent on Christmas last year.

As stated in a report that came out earlier this week, most mobile shopping was conducted on iOS devices. The iPad led all mobile-device traffic at 7 percent, followed by iPhone at 6.4 percent and Android at 5 percent, according to IBM.

Many of the days surrounding the holidays have acquired quirky nicknames, such as Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving), Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) and Green Monday (the second Monday of December).

Perhaps this Christmas will qualify as Sofa Sunday.

The term was first introduced to me by Joaquin Ruiz, the co-founder and CEO of Padopolis, which makes a catalog app for the iPad. He was hoping the Sunday after Thanksgiving would see a spike in traffic after everyone hit the mall on Black Friday and then curled up on the couch with their iPad the following Sunday to recover.

This year, Christmas Sunday’s shopping spike continued into Monday, also known as Boxing Day. IBM said that online sales were up 10 percent by midday on Monday, over Dec. 26 last year, and that mobile sales were up 13.8 percent.

(Image courtesy of iStockphoto | mattjeacock)