Amazon.com has now been selling goods online for an impressive eleven holiday seasons, but it has never had a season like the one that is just ending. 2005 is one for the record books.
Amazon.com set a new single-day sales record this holiday season. On December 12th more than 3.6 million items were ordered on the giant online retail site. That is 41 items per second.
All systems were definitely go.
"To our customers around the world — thank you," said an ebullient Amazon.com CEO, Jeff Bezos. "We are grateful to [you] for shopping with us this holiday season and we wish everyone a happy new year."
Around the world is right. Amazon.com shipped to over 200 countries this holiday season, and on the peak day of the season shipped over 2.7 million units, with over 99% of orders arriving in time to meet holiday deadlines worldwide.
According to Amazon.com's self-dubbed Holiday Delight-O-Meter, over 108 million items were ordered.
And what was in Amazon's bag of goodies? The most expensive item purchased was a $94,000 pair of diamond earrings. More down to earth, the company sold enough running shoes to outfit nearly every participant in this year's Boston Marathon.
The season's hot selling items ranged from Mario Party 7 for Gamecube and the Game Boy Advance SP in Pearl Blue to CDs by Enya, Diana Krall and Bruce Springsteen and the Black and Decker SS925 Storm Station All-in-one Rechargeable Power Source/Radio/Light.
Top software titles included QuickBooks Pro 2006 Financial Software for Small Business, TurboTax Total Tax Solution Deluxe 2005 with State and Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0. Top sellers in the beauty area were philosophy candy cane shower and bubble bath, philosophy holiday rescue hot cocoa & marshmallow gift set and the Caswell-Massey 10 Product Sampler.
In DVDs, Star Wars, Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, March of the Penguins and Madagascar headed the list.
If you think shoppers were merely drawn to the Internet by low prices, then you probably did not do much shopping online this holiday season. Once most customers paid for wrapping, customized cards and special shipping, savings was the last thing on their minds.
In fact, a new study from the MIT Sloan School of Management found that the Web's ability to easily locate products, especially niche items, easily trumped price as a reason for shopping online.
"People do save money by going online, but when we compared lower prices to greater choice, we found that the value to consumers of having the extra choice was 10 times greater than the value for price alone," says the study's lead researcher, MIT Sloan School of Management professor Erik Brynjolfsson. "Consumers tend to be less price-sensitive if they are able to find a special niche product."
Anyone who frantically drove from store to store this holiday season looking for that "special" gift knows how frustrating and time-consuming shopping can be. Looking online takes a fraction of the time, and because virtual shelf space is far less expensive than brick-and-mortar stocking of low-selling items, more e-tailers carry niche items.
As a result, for many online retailers, their customer service mantra is quickly becoming, "Convenience, convenience, convenience."
