comScore (SCOR) Sees U.S. Online Holiday Spending up 14% in 2015

comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR) reported its official spending forecast for the November-December 2015 holiday season. The official comScore 2015 holiday season forecast is that total online retail spending for the November–December period will reach $70.1 billion, representing a 14-percent gain versus year ago. Spending using desktop computers for that period is expected to reach $58.3 billion, up 9 percent year-over-year. Mobile commerce is predicted to account for $11.7 billion of retail spending, representing 17 percent of total digital commerce and growing at a rate of 47 percent vs. last season. In total, digital commerce is expected to account for about 15 percent of consumers' discretionary spending.

"The 2015 online holiday shopping season is expected to surpass $70 billion in spending, representing a year-over-year growth rate of 14 percent across desktop, smartphones and tablets, and once again far outpacing the growth of brick-and-mortar retail during the most important stretch of the year for retailers," said Gian Fulgoni, Executive Chairman Emeritus of comScore. "Although we anticipate a marginal slowdown in the digital commerce growth rate from last year's 15-percent level, the overall economic outlook is positive, which bodes well for consumers and retailers. Importantly, there's one additional shopping day between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, which when coupled with low gas prices means that consumers will have more cash on hand to take advantage of the slightly longer holiday season."

Added Fulgoni, "Last year, many retailers opened stores on Thanksgiving Day with unexpected results, as some consumers shifted their store visits from Black Friday to Thanksgiving Day but reduced their spending rate. The good news is that online buying more than compensated for the softness of in-store sales, with growth rates of more than 25 percent during those two days. We anticipate that happening again this year. In addition, we expect Cyber Monday – the first Monday after the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend – to surpass $3 billion in online sales and become the heaviest online spending day in history for the sixth straight year, with roughly half a billion of those dollars coming from mobile devices."

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