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Report: Online retail hits $41.9 billion in latest quarterly report

Online retail is booming according to the latest figures from comScore. Consumers spent $41.9 billion online in the third quarter, a 15% increase over the same period last year.
Written by James Kendrick, Contributor
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The latest e-commerce figures from comScore demonstrate that consumers are spending a lot of money with online retail operations. The third quarter figures from analyst firm comScore show a solid $41.9 billion was spent via e-commerce, a 15% increase over the same period last year.

This was the eighth consecutive quarter that showed a double digit growth over last year. If this trend continues we could see a record holiday season with over $55 billion in e-commerce sales.

Content producers will be happy to note that digital content and subscriptions was the top-performing category in the third quarter, followed by consumer electronics. The latter surely benefits from the growing popularity of the tablet. The report doesn't break down the recipient of the majority of the digital content sales but no doubt Amazon is riding the popularity of its Kindle line.

The top five categories of product sales contributing to the big quarter were: Digital Content and Subscriptions, Consumer Electronics, Event Tickets, Apparel and Accessories, and Computer Software. Each category experienced at least a 16 percent growth over the same period last year.

Of particular significance is the high number of consumers admitting to "showrooming". This is the practice of using a smartphone in a retail shop to check online prices of a product in the store, and even buying the product online. Brick and mortar retail stores must be trying to figure out how to deal with this rising practice by consumers.

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