The Bottom Line: The online holiday retail breakdown -- Where's your silver lining?

You may have already heard the news: Online retail sales dropped this year by 3 percent, to $25.5 billion from 2007's $26.3 billion, during the Nov. 1 to Dec. 23 holiday shopping season according to online research firm comScore. (Note that comScore categorizes Dec. 23 as the last day consumers could purchase Web items to arrive by Christmas.)

What's gone under-reported is the good news for emerchants within comScore's data: Online Spending Trends Outperformed Brick-And-Mortar Across Several Key Retail Categories. Here's comScore's stat breakdown for the three weeks prior to the Christmas holiday:

Meanwhile, the data comScore used showed a 19 to 21 percent decline in land-based Apparel & Accessories sales. Even the negative categories that didn't make the list above indicated an online "silver lining." While Consumer Electronics sales declined 5 percent online, overall electronics sales retail-wide dropped a whopping 26 percent. And while Jewelry & Watches declined 24 percent online, the Luxury Goods category (which includes Jewelry & Watches) plummeted 34 percent across the retail board.

Granted, the data used by comScore came from MasterCard Advisors’ SpendingPulse Unit, which tracks MasterCard sales only while estimating everything else. But some data is better than no real data at all, which is the case with the Census Bureau's retail "Projections" for 2008 (included below).

Important to note is that numbers from auction sites such as eBay were excluded from comScore's calculations. eBay numbers alone could well make up any declines. Though sales numbers aren't in yet, we do know that eBay had the highest number of visitors of any product-selling site on the Internet over the holiday season: something like 81 million unique visitors shopping for or selling first- and second-hand products through this commission-paid U.S.-based online auction powerhouse.

There's one more set up numbers of breakdown from comScore's data. These relate to how all of this relates to you:

In short, reports comScore, "Those households earning less than $50,000 per year appear to be the most affected by the current economic environment, with their online spending declining by 13 percent versus year ago."

I say it's not so much a case of the rich getting richer -- we know that the high-end products were the big losers this season -- but rather a case of those watching a tight bottom line putting the money where it should be when times are tough: into products they wanted, at a steal.. Of course, Gather's own Contrarian says it's really a result of "deflationary psychology" ... but I'll leave the pontificating up to him. ; )

How about you? Is there a silver lining for you in the retail numbers?

		Jennifer D. Meacham, Gather Money Correspondent
	Jennifer's column, "The Bottom Line," is published every week to the Gather Essentials: Money channel. Jennifer is a business and personal finance columnist who covers money matters for RedwoodAge.com and real estate news for RISMedia, and co-authored the best-selling retirement investing guide "IRA Wealth: Revolutionary IRA Strategies for Real Estate Investment" (Square One Publishers, New York). Keep up on the latest news and analysis into how you can take control of your business and personal financial future by joining Jennifer's "Self-Directed Investing 101" network.

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