US consumer survey: Online shopping via computer costs 50.2 billion dollars

In the first quarter of 2013, consumers spent 50.2 billion of billions of dollars on computer online shopping, up 13% per cent year-on-year. In addition, customers buy 5.9 billion of dollars of goods through tablets and smartphones.

Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comscore, Gian Forgni that the strong momentum of a 13% per cent year-on-year increase in retail sales bodes well for the year, but lags slightly behind the 1% to 2% of the first few quarters. In the fourth quarter of 2012, retail sales rose 14% in the second and third quarters, and 17% in the first quarter.

The explanation for the slow slowdown is that a rise in personal income taxes, which will take effect in 2013, has led to a gradual decline in American disposable income. As long as employment continues to rise and consumer sentiment remains upbeat, the outlook for E-commerce in 2013 remains bright, Fulgoni said.

However, the U.S. government is in the federal sales tax legislation, requiring online retailers to levy a sales tax on each transaction, which will hinder the continued growth of E-commerce in the future.

Add up the computer end and mobile end of the sales, the first quarter online total sales of 56.01 billion U.S. dollars. ComScore did not disclose estimates for mobile E-commerce in the first quarter of 2012, and vice President Andrew Lipsman said smartphones and tablet-side shopping grew twice times higher than the computer's.

Assuming that mobile E-commerce has grown at a growth rate of 26% over the past year, it is twice times the 13% growth rate of e-commerce at the computer end, indicating that mobile-end sales amounted to $4.7 billion trillion in the first quarter of 2012, and online sales amounted to 49 billion dollars. With the first quarter of 2013 total online sales of 56 billion U.S. dollars compared to 14% growth rate, still maintain a slow deceleration growth. Because ComScore has not yet included sales of tablets and smartphones, growth has been underestimated in recent quarters.

Electricity consumption accounted for 10.6% of consumer discretionary spending in the first quarter of 2013, according to comscore, a record high of 9.4% in the first quarter of 2012.

Of these, five product categories grew by 20% over the same period last year, with the best performance online commodity categories including digital content subscriptions, apparel and accessories, sports and fitness, consumer electronics and consumer packaged goods. On mobile platforms such as smartphones and tablets, apparel and accessories are among the highest-selling commodity categories, with sales close to $1 billion in the first quarter.

In addition, American consumers spend nearly half of their time (48%) shopping online via mobile devices, with smartphones accounting for 34% and tablets accounting for 14%.