With the success of Black Friday and Cyber Monday behind us, what's ahead for the rest of December? When we spoke with consumers we found that 42% of them plan to complete the majority of their purchases in early/mid December while 6% plan to wait until the last minute. Combined, that's almost half of consumers that still need to complete the majority of their holiday shopping - a promising sign for retailers headed into the rest of December.

When we take a look at e-commerce spend from 2008, we see a similar story with comScore reporting around $16.2 billion in online sales from Thanksgiving through Christmas last year. The week before Christmas accounted for a surprising 20% of these sales - that's purchases that happened after the start of the December 18th shipping cut-offs. Similarly, the weekend before Christmas saw a 98% increase in e-commerce sales in 2008 compared to the same time frame in 2007.
Is Santa arriving late this year? Are consumers more comfortable than ever making last minute purchases via the online channel? Time will tell but many signs point to a successful December and a successful last-minute holiday shopping season.

Source: comScore, 2008

Posted by Eric Lopez, the Google Retail Team