comScore has released a new US e-Commerce spending numbers for the fourth quarter of 2016. For marketers, this is the most important quarter as it includes the holiday spending, which is where many people get their first taste of online shopping.
The report found that for Q4 the total online spending reached $109.3 billion. Of that, $22.7 billion was completed through mobile devices including smart phones and tablets. This is a significant growth, bringing it up to 21% of all sales. Compared to 2015, mobile only made up 16.9% of the total e-commerce spending.
comScore also determined that $80.2 billion was spent online during the November-December 2016 holiday season, up 17 percent year-over-year, and right in line with comScore’s early season prediction of 16-19 percent growth. While comScore previously released its holiday sales estimates from desktop computers, today it revealed for the first time that mobile commerce grew 44 percent from a season ago, with $17.1 billion spent via smartphones and tablets. M-commerce accounted for a 21-percent share of the season’s total digital sales, up from 17 percent in 2015, as more people become comfortable making their holiday purchases on mobile devices.
“The 2016 online holiday shopping season had another successful year, with desktop growth rates in line with our expectations and once again far exceeding that of brick-and-mortar,” said comScore CEO Gian Fulgoni, in January. “We also saw strong mobile commerce spending in November, with mobile’s share of total e-commerce coming in well ahead of the 20-percent mark it reached in Q3.”
Even while mobile continues to gain a greater percentage of the total online sales, it is also having an even bigger impact with in-person sales. An estimated 60% of offline retail sales are influenced by people using their mobile device to either find the item, read reviews, use coupons, or price-match. In this way, mobile is clearly the dominant driver of sales through both online and offline environments.
Looking at mobile since 2010, the revenue share has increased nearly 20%. In 2010, mobile accounted for just over 3% of digital sales, in 2011 it held a 9% share, and in 2012 and 2012 an 11% share. Since 2013, the mobile share has increased another 10%.
