E-Commerce Spending Reaches $17.5 Billion

Consumers have spent $17.5 billion via e-commerce during the first 23 days of November. That is an 11% increase over the same period in 2013. The data is for desktop computers, according to research firm comScore (tablet and smartphone activity brings this figure to a much larger number). All retailers will not get the money equally, as Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) takes the lion’s share, and troubled retailers, most likely, take almost none of it.

According to comScore the spending was not spread evenly by date:

Friday, November 21 has been the heaviest online spending day of the season to date at $914 million in desktop spending. Two other individual shopping days (Wednesday, Nov. 12 and Wednesday, Nov. 19) have also surpassed the $900 million threshold.

Total holiday retail sales are not expected to rise much overall in November and December. The largest association of retailers painted a pessimist forecast for the season:

After a turbulent start to 2014, the National Retail Federation announced today it expects sales in November and December (excluding autos, gas and restaurant sales) to increase a healthy 4.1 percent to $616.9 billion, higher than 2013’s actual 3.1 percent increase during that same time frame.

If Amazon reaches its forecast for the final quarter of the year, its revenue will be well over $20 billion. Although this is for three months, and the comScore and NRF numbers are for shorter periods, the prediction by the huge e-commerce company indicates that there will not be much more money to go around the hundreds and hundreds of online retail sites.

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Several bricks-and-mortar retailers have traditionally posted large online sales. These include Walmart (NYSE: WMT), Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), and Target (NYSE: TGT). This means the most troubled retailers, particularly Sears Holdings (NASDAQ: SHLD), owner of Sears and Kmart, and J.C. Penney (NYSE: JCP) will fight over a tiny part of the pie–not enough to help drag them from their weak positions.

E-commerce numbers have started to indicate another healthy increase, year over previous year. However, based on likely market share. all retailers are not created equal.