AOL Drives Over $1 Billion in 1998 Holiday Shopping Sales
BusinessWire, Monday, January 04, 1999 at 09:31
DULLES, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 4, 1999--
1.25 Million AOL Members Become
First-Time Buyers During Holiday Shopping Season
Satisfaction Levels Among AOL
Shoppers Hit All-time High; Nearly All
Plan to Shop Online Again Within Next 6 Months
AOL's Philanthropic Initiatives
Raise Over $100,000 for "Share Our Strength"
America Online, the world's leading interactive service and
e-commerce leader, Monday announced that its members spent over $1
billion with online retailers available through AOL during the nearly
six weeks of the 1998 holiday shopping season.
In addition, 1.25 million AOL members shopped online for the
first time ever this holiday season.
AOL members spent an estimated $1.2 billion shopping online
through AOL this holiday season, the period between November 26 and
December 27, according to new research produced for America Online,
Inc. by the Internet Research Group (IRG), an independent firm based
in Radnor, Pa.
This year, Thursday, December 17 was the heaviest shopping day of
the season as well as AOL's best retail day ever -- generating over
$36 million in sales of consumer goods and travel-related services.
In comparison, the 1997 holiday shopping season marked the first
time that purchases by AOL members resulted in the first-ever $1
million shopping day, with a series of $1 million days following in
the weeks before Christmas.
IRG research also revealed:
-- This holiday season, AOL motivated 1.25 million members to
make their first-ever purchase online;
-- 63% of AOL shoppers are "very satisfied" with the online
shopping experience, and the remaining 37% are "satisfied"; and
-- 98% of of AOL shoppers surveyed said they would be motivated
to buy online in the next six months, with 73% "very likely" and 25%
"likely."
"It's clear that this past holiday shopping season marks a
turning point -- when shopping online really became a key part of
consumers' shopping patterns," said Bob Pittman, AOL's President and
COO. "Though it is a critical time to get new online buyers into the
habit, shopping online isn't just a holiday phenomenon.
"The unbeatable ease and convenience online shopping offers was
instrumental in driving an unprecedented number of consumers to try it
for the first time this holiday season -- but now that they've tried
it and experienced all its benefits, we expect they'll come back and
shop again throughout the year."
For the second year in a row, mainstream consumer products
emerged as the most popular retail categories this holiday season on
AOL's Shopping Channel, the most popular shopping destination in
cyberspace according to Media Metrix research.
Based on traffic averages to AOL Shopping Channel departments,
the Toys, Kids and Babies category held the No. 1 spot overall during
November and December, followed closely by apparel, last year's most
popular category.
As previously reported, the average AOL holiday shopper purchased
two items online every week during the 1998 holiday shopping season,
and spent 48% more on each purchase than in 1998 for an average of
$54.00. AOL shoppers spent nearly 50% more per purchase in 1998 than
1997.
Partners As Well As Members Benefit Through Services Only AOL Can
Offer
AOL has become cyberspace's consumer e-commerce leader by
providing services -- for both its members and its partners -- that no
one else can offer.
Wendy Brown, AOL's Vice President of Electronic Commerce, said,
"We've been serious about online commerce for three holiday shopping
seasons now and as a result, know what our members want, how to make
them comfortable online and how to design shopping sites that work
with the mass market.
"That's why we offer both our members and our partners so much
more than just a Website or a random collection of links. Because we
know what our members want, we can work with our partners to provide
the best possible online shopping experience -- and our members feel
more comfortable shopping on AOL."
Brown added, "This year on AOL, in addition to offering the best
merchants, products and services, we took the member service
experience to a whole new level, leveraging our Member Services
organization to provide shopping tips and suggestions through a new
service we called the 'Holiday Shopping Helper.'
"AOL is unique in that we have the resources, and the focus on
the consumer, that enable us to provide a service like this."
By calling AOL's Holiday Shopping Helper on a free 800 number,
AOL members were able to address questions about online shopping to
real people, and get answers on everything from 'how do I shop online'
to 'can you suggest a great gift for my sister?'" Almost 70% of all
AOL members using the Holiday Shopping Helper rated the service as
"excellent" or "very good."
In addition, AOL offered its Shopping Channel partners a variety
of benefits designed to help them maximize their sales this holiday
season, including:
-- Merchandising and promotional support: Leveraging its three
years of online shopping experience with the mass market, AOL advises
partners on what, when and how to promote within the AOL service to
attract the most shoppers. For example, last minute shopping has been
extremely popular in prior years on AOL and this year merchants were
strongly encouraged offer last-minute options this shopping season.
AOL also offers numerous special promotional opportunities to
merchants, including the AOL Gift Finder and Gift List, and
specialized cross-merchant collections like the Corporate Gift and
Last-Minute Gift areas as well as the post-holiday Mega Clearance Sale
area.
-- 24x7 technical support. AOL's Web Operations team uses
automated systems to monitor the performance of all AOL shopping
sites, quickly identifying problems which might impact customer
experience or sales and working directly with partners' technical
teams to diagnose and fix problems.
-- Programming integration: AOL helps partners benefit from
members' heavy online use (45 minutes a day) by integrating shopping
advice and opportunities across the service, by educating new members
about how to save time and money shopping online, by promoting
targeted merchandise offerings outside of the Shopping Channel, and by
offering highly contextual promotional opportunities in different
content areas.
Brown continued: "Linking contextually relevant product
promotions into content areas that attract likely buyers has proven to
deliver great results for merchants.
"Being the leading online service means we know more about what
our members want and how they like to spend their time online, and
bringing this knowledge to our merchants and helping them understand
how to apply it to online shopping is invaluable."
AOL's E-Commerce Partners Speak Out
AOL's 110 Shopping Channel merchant partners benefited from the
consistent increases in holiday traffic and climbing numbers of
first-time and repeat AOL buyers.
Eli Katz, COO of Fragrance Counter (AMEX:ALU), said: "Fragrance
Counter's sales are up four fold this holiday season with
approximately half of our total sales from America Online. Our success
reaffirms the value of our long-term deal with AOL."
Jon Diamond, Vice Chairman and CEO, N2K, Inc. said: "As the
premier music e-commerce partner with AOL worldwide, Music Boulevard
has received tremendous exposure during the holiday season and
throughout the year, providing us with a tremendous number of
qualified online shoppers from AOL's loyal 15 million users.
"Allying our two trusted brands allows Music Boulevard to clearly
demonstrate the power of music retailing on the Internet by greatly
extending awareness of our brand and offering consumers the best in
online music purchasing opportunities."
Steve Riggio, Vice Chairman of Barnes & Noble, Inc. said: "We are
very pleased with barnesandnoble.com's performance on AOL. With AOL's
ever increasing membership, this is a tremendous outlet for us."
Kevin Appelbaum, President and CEO of Digital Chef, said:
"Digital Chef experienced an exponential growth in sales each day
leading up to the holiday with sales up 10 times what they were the
previous month.
"Our prominent presence on AOL's Shopping and Food Channels were
instrumental in helping us to achieve our most successful shopping
season ever. In fact, items featured in AOL's online holiday shopping
catalog and special promotions were consistently bestsellers
throughout the season."
The Greatest Gift
To help in the fight against childhood hunger and poverty this
holiday season, AOL announced that it raised more than $100,000 in
philanthropic efforts to support Share Our Strength, one of the
nation's leading anti-hunger and anti-poverty organizations.
In addition to its Share Our Strength Online Gift-Giving
Campaign, which launched on December 10 and continues through January
31, the Company worked with Tiger Toys, a division of Hasbro, Impulse
Buy Network and OpenSite Technologies to host an online auction of
this season's most popular toy, the Furby.
From December 7th through December 22nd, AOL members donated over
$100,000 to Share our Strength through bids made on Furby toys.
About AOL Shopping
With more than 15 million members on AOL -- and millions more
other Internet users on AOL.COM -- America Online is the undisputed
leader in the online marketplace, bringing together the best roster of
name-brand retail partners with the largest audience of shoppers
anywhere in cyberspace.
More people use America Online to shop than any other destination
in cyberspace because, with more than 110 of the best brand name
partners offering the largest variety of popular consumer products,
AOL makes it easy and convenient for consumers to locate and buy the
products they are looking for.
With the Shopping Channel on AOL and AOL.COM, consumers need only
visit one shopping site rather than multiple stores - to find what
they are interested in buying. All of this -- brand name merchants,
one-stop-shopping, and great new features and programming -- makes AOL
the most popular place to browse and e-shop throughout the year.
Greg
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