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No recession here: Amazon.com reports best Christmas season ever...

 
Deal with it
User ID: 579913
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12/26/2008 01:11 PM
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No recession here: Amazon.com reports best Christmas season ever...
[link to www.tgdaily.com]

Seattle (WA) – Retailers are slashing prices to curb Christmas sales declines, but there is also a surprising success story from Amazon.com, which reported that its 14th holiday season was the best in the company’s history.

Amazon.com did not release exact sales numbers, but provided some stunning numbers of items ordered. The strongest day of the season was December 15, Amazon said, and saw a total of 6.3 million items ordered – or almost 73 items every second. Between November 15 and December 10, the company sold one copy of Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 every 2.5 minutes. The weight of all GPS devices sold from Black Friday through December equals the combined weight of 151 Mini Coopers, Amazon.com said.

The top sellers in consumer electronics included Samsung's 52” 120 Hz LCD HDTV, the Apple iPod touch 8 GB and the Acer Aspire One 8.9” netbook with a 160 GB hard drive. The best-selling software included Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, Norton Antivirus 2009 and Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Home & Student Edition. The most successful DVDs were Wall-E and the The Dark Knight; the best-selling Blu-ray disc was The Dark Knight, the company said.

There was no surprise in video game console shipments: Nintendo Wii dominated the top sellers in video games and hardware including the Wii console, the Wii remote controller and the Wii nunchuk controller.

Analysts believe that heavy snowfall in some regions in the U.S. created a favorable scenario for online stores. “Online spending over the most recent weekend was clearly substantially heavier than the corresponding weekend nearest Christmas last year, which suggests that many consumers opted for the cozier confines of online shopping rather than having to brave the severe cold and snowstorms affecting much of the northern half of the country,” said ComScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “It’s also clear that this year’s compressed shopping season has resulted in some consumers buying online later than they did a year ago. A positive late-season boost for online retail perhaps, but it’s ultimately not going to do much to make up for the significantly shorter shopping season this year.”

Comscore estimates that through December 21, $24.71 billion has been spent online, down 1% versus the same period in 2007. Online spending during the last recent weekend (December 20-21) totaled $677 million, down 17% from the fourth weekend after Thanksgiving last year (December 16-17, 2007). However, Comscore noted that when compared to the weekend nearest Christmas last year (December 22-23, 2007), spending this past weekend was nearly twice as high.
Anonymous Coward (OP)
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12/26/2008 01:14 PM
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Re: No recession here: Amazon.com reports best Christmas season ever...
rolleyes

chorus

door
Anonymous Coward
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12/26/2008 01:19 PM
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Re: No recession here: Amazon.com reports best Christmas season ever...
it is good to read positive reports!
Anonymous Coward
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12/26/2008 01:35 PM
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Re: No recession here: Amazon.com reports best Christmas season ever...
ahhh

This is not doom

rant
Anonymous Coward (OP)
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12/26/2008 01:37 PM
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Re: No recession here: Amazon.com reports best Christmas season ever...
it is good to read positive reports!
 Quoting: Anonymous Coward 579889


Yep. expect to be slammed on GLP for posting a positive story though, or have it twisted into some sort of doom.

chuckle

hf
Anonymous Coward
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12/26/2008 01:38 PM
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Re: No recession here: Amazon.com reports best Christmas season ever...
fucking stupid loser



The US Christmas shopping season has proved to be one of the most dismal for decades. Total US retail takings dropped by 5.5% in November and by 8% in December, according to preliminary figures from SpendingPulse, a research arm of the credit card firm Mastercard. Excluding petrol, checkout takings fell by between 2% and 4%.

The numbers are likely to stoke alarm about fragile consumer confidence in the US, where most analysts expect that fourth-quarter GDP figures will confirm that the economy is in a recession.

Michael McNamara, vice-president of research and analysis at SpendingPulse, said blasts of heavy snow across the northern US had aggravated already weak conditions.

"A difficult economic environment combined with unfavourable weather during the last week of shopping made 2008 one of the most challenging holiday shopping seasons in decades," he said.

Shoppers appear to be putting their appetites first. Grocery and restaurant takings were relatively strong, as were online purchases for internet retailers such as Amazon.

But luxury goods and the fashion industry took a battering. Women's wear sales slumped by 22% to 23%, sales of men's clothes dived by 14% and footwear dropped 13.5%. Takings at electronics stores plummeted by 26%.

Faced with unsold stocks and a shortfall in year-end targets, shops offered unusually steep discounts in the run-up to Christmas. Department stores such as Macy's and Bloomingdale's and fashion outlets such as Ann Taylor are aggressively promoting swingeing price cuts of up to 60%.

The National Retail Federation said many stores have loosened restrictions on after-Christmas returns of unwanted presents in the hope of luring more people into purchases.

The federation has asked the incoming administration to introduce a series of sales tax "holidays" for 10 days during off-peak seasons in March, July and October in an effort to spark business and reignite the economy.

"The situation is critical," said the federation in a letter to president-elect Barack Obama, citing "a disastrous combination of decreasing home values, increasing unemployment, reduced availability of credit, failures of major companies and weakness in the stockmarket".

Britt Beemer, an analyst at America's Research Group, said recent surveys had shown that as many as 30% of Americans are concerned about their jobs. "That puts them in a survival mindset," he said. "They slice all their extra spending."

Retail stocks swung lower in early trading on Wall Street. But Amazon proved to be an exception – its shares climbed 2.6% after it reported its busiest ever Christmas with 6.3m orders on its peak day, December 15.

Among Amazon's top sellers was Coldplay's album, Viva la Vida. The firm said it had shipped enough CDs to stretch from Seattle to Violet Hill, the London street immortalised in a Coldplay song.

Despite the poor retail figures, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 34 points in early trading yesterday.
Anonymous Coward
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12/26/2008 01:38 PM
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Re: No recession here: Amazon.com reports best Christmas season ever...
[link to www.guardian.co.uk]
Anonymous Coward (OP)
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12/26/2008 05:12 PM
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Re: No recession here: Amazon.com reports best Christmas season ever...
catdance
I Am Spartacus

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12/26/2008 05:30 PM
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Re: No recession here: Amazon.com reports best Christmas season ever...
No recession here? Where is this magical place?
Yours Truly!





GLP