The Amazon who stole Christmas?
Online retailer Amazon is hawking its holiday sales traffic today, claiming a single-day company record of 6.3 million items ordered on December 15. But the report lacks hard numbers, and another new report points to hard times for every retailer - including e-commerce. Amazon is benefiting from more people shopping online than ever before, but at a time when most have less money to spend.
Overall U.S. retail sales fell 2.5 percent in November and 4 percent in December versus the previous year, excluding automobile and gas purchases, according to data released yesterday by SpendingPulse, a spending-analysis arm of credit card giant Mastercard. Among the worst-hit sectors were consumer electronics and appliances, which declined 26.7 percent this year versus a 2.7 percent gain last year. E-commerce only fell two percent, but that number looks bad against the sector’s 22.4 percent gain the previous year.