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Online Shopping is Steadily Going Up

Even during the year of 9-11, when retail sales hit an all-time low, more and more people were turning to the Internet to do their shopping.

The online sales increase will fuel double-digit growth in categories such as health and beauty (61 percent); apparel (42 percent); and flowers, cards, and gifts (41 percent). The report expects total online sales to account for 6.6 percent of total retail sales in 2004, compared to 5.4 percent in 2003, and 3.6 percent on 2002. Online sales figures were broken in 2003 when revenues climbed to $114 billion — a 51 percent increase over 2002. Compounding the good news about the sales figures, the study found that 79 percent of retailers were profitable in 2003, compared to 70 percent in 2002.

Shop.org, a division of the National Retail Federation, found robust growth in several online shopping categories in 2003. Online travel sales increased 91 percent over 2002 to $52.4 billion; home and office generated $11.1 billion; and computer hardware and software rang up $11.0 billion.

As verified on the United States Online Spending Census website

NA Not available. (r) Revised. (p) Preliminary. ¹ Estimates exclude Food Services.

² E-commerce sales are sales of goods and services where an order is placed by the buyer or price and terms of sale are negotiated over an Internet, extranet, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) network, electronic mail, or other online system. Payment may or may not be made online.³ Estimated measures of sampling variability (shown as percents) for 1st quarter 2004 estimates: coefficient of variation (cv) of total sales - 0.6; cv of e-commerce - 4.3; standard error (se) of e-commerce as a percent of total sales - 0.1; se of quarter-to-quarter change in total sales - 0.2; se of quarter-to-quarter change in e-commerce - 1.2; se of current quarter to same-quarter-a-year-ago change in total sales - 0.4; se of current quarter to same-quarter-a-year-ago change in e-commerce - 1.8. Measures of sampling variability for estimates from prior quarters can be obtained by dividing the margin of error for the estimate as published in the Reliability of Estimates section of prior releases by 1.645.

Note: Estimates are not adjusted for seasonal variation, holiday or trading-day differences, or price changes. For information on confidentiality protection, sampling error, nonsampling error, sample design, and definitions, see http://www.census.gov/mrts/www/nrely.html.