NewsAmazon.com Leads As Traffic to E-Retailers Surges
By Monica Summers
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The number of people surfing the Internet surged again last week, jumping 38 percent year over year, with diversified Web retailer Amazon.com Inc. (NasdaqNM:AMZN - news) breaking away from the pack with more than 6 million visitors during the week, a survey showed on Thursday.
With the holiday shopping season in full swing, traffic to electronic commerce sites last week jumped 44 percent compared with the same week in 1998, according to the study by market research firm Media Metrix Inc. (NasdaqNM:MMXI - news).
In addition, a second survey by market research firm PC Data showed about 1.8 million home-based buyers who actually purchased items from Amazon.com in November. Buy.com and eToys more than doubled the number of buyers over October, with 876,000 and 403,000, respectively, the firm said.
Amazon.com had its strongest showing yet this holiday season and has more than doubled the number of visitors during the week ended Dec. 5 compared with the same period last year, Media Metrix said.
By the close Thursday, shares of Amazon.com had jumped 15-1/16 to 103-5/8 on the Nasdaq stock market after brokerage J.P. Morgan began recommending investors buy the stock and said the shares could trade as high as $160 within 12 months.
As expected, most online retailers have enjoyed large percentage gains this holiday season in the number of visitors who are calling up their sites to shop for everything from toys and consumer electronics to apparel and home accessories.
The increasing comfort-level of online shoppers over the past year has led analyst Forrester Research Inc. to predict online holiday sales, from Thanksgiving through the New Year, to reach $4 billion, up from $1.5 billion in 1998.
Web auctioneer eBay Inc.'s (NasdaqNM:EBAY - news) site held the No. 2 retail spot with more than 4.2 million visitors for the week ending Dec. 5, a 64 percent increase over last year.
Toy retailer eToys Inc. (NasdaqNM:ETYS - news) came in at No. 3 with 2 million visitors, but traffic to the site grew a less robust 27 percent year over year, according to Media Metrix weekly data.
Shares of eToys fell 4-3/8 to 48-3/4 after J.P. Morgan advised clients that the stock was unlikely to see the gains it predicted for stocks like Amazon.
Still, two electronic commerce sites recorded significant percentage gains in their traffic over last year.
Toy retailer Toys R Us Inc. (NYSE:TOY - news) showed a 451 percent gain in site traffic with more than 1.9 million visitors, up from 346,000 during the same week last year, even as the company has been trying to iron out technical problems that have plagued its online operation during the past two weeks.
Toys R Us shares declined 13/16 of a point to 15-5/16 on the New York Stock Exchange.
Web retailer Buy.com, which sells everything from computers to music CDs at low cost -- often sacrificing any profit margin -- also enjoyed a 441 percent gain over last year, logging 1.8 million visitors for the week ending Dec. 5.
Rounding off the top 10 were bookseller Barnesandnoble.com Inc. (NasdaqNM:BNBN - news) at No. 6 with 1.7 million visitors during the week, followed by music retailer CDNow Inc. (NasdaqNM:CDNW - news), online travel agents Travelocity.com, a unit of Sabre Holdings Corp. (NYSE:TSG - news), and Expedia Inc. (NasdaqNM:EXPE - news), and KBkids.com, the online toy store unit of Consolidated Stores Corp. (NYSE:CNS - news).
Earlier Stories
Web Merchants Boast Strong Sales (November 30)
Corrected: Web Merchants Boast Strong Sales (November 30)
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