Email a copy of 'Holiday Shopping Spikes Thanks to Expedited Shipping' to a friend
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Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.
This report is exactly why you have to be careful when looking at statistics. Why are they comparing Dec to Nov? Two completely different animals. One is a pre-Thanksgiving period, the other the heat of battle just before Christmas. If it WASN’T substantially higher in Dec, something is wrong with the retail world. So no surprise there. Verizon would also like to announce that December is busier than February (another no-brainer).
These statistics mean NOTHING. In fact, also in the report, it said that the period of Dec 14-15 was 26.6% higher than Nov, making the supposed “spike” period look like a LULL in sales. AGAIN, why are we comparing Dec to Nov? The best test would be comparing year over year, Dec to Dec, same weekend days, Fri-Sun, not dates. Useless information. Who makes up this dog cr@p?
Don’t forget the holy trinity of key ingredients in a report – lies, damn lies, and statistics!