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December 19 is This Year's Drop-Dead Shipping Deadline

December 8, 2006

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Shoppers who would rather buy online than fight crowds at the mall need to keep a close eye on the calendar -- they have about a week left to shop online before retailers start scaling back shipping guarantees.

That's according to the 2006 eHoliday Mood Study, conducted by BizRate Research for Shopzilla and Shop.org. The study 76 online retailers and found that the number of retailers who guarantee that standard shipping orders placed by December 18 or 19 will be delivered by Christmas Day (39%) nearly doubled from last year (19%), despite there being one less business day to ship merchandise this year due to Christmas falling on a Monday rather than a Sunday.

Approximately one-third (32%) of retailers' standard shipping deadlines are December 15, 16, or 17 and almost a quarter (23%) are December 14 or earlier. A small group of retailers (6%) are pushing the envelope, saying that their magic day for final standard shipping orders to be placed will be December 20 or later.

"As retailers' systems become more sophisticated, shipping deadlines are being extended," said Scott Silverman, Executive Director of Shop.org. "Retailers recognize that many of us procrastinate, so companies are giving shoppers a little extra time to buy online this holiday season. Online retailers will be scrambling to fill every last order so that Christmas presents will be received on time."

Though retailers have been heavily marketing the holiday season this year, companies said that one plan stands above the rest. According to the Study, catalogs are the most successful offline tool to generate online sales, with 38 percent of retailers rating catalogs as the most successful tool for increasing revenue.

Catalogs also resonate with consumers. In fact, more online shoppers typically use printed catalogs to research products and buy online (43%) than use them to research and order products from the catalog (24%).

As expected, online retailers are seeing big gains this holiday season. According to the survey, one-fourth (25%) of online retailers said their holiday sales are at least 50 percent higher than last year at this time.

Another one-fourth of retailers (26%) said that holiday sales have grown between 25 and 49 percent over last year. In addition, 68 percent of online retailers said that the average order value has increased over last year and 85 percent found that their site traffic has increased over last holiday season.

Consumers who plan to shop online this year say they will do so to avoid crowds (72%), avoid lines in retail stores (58%), and because they believe it is easier to compare prices (52%).

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