E Commerce Continues its Rise

Well, while everything else is experiencing a soft patch, one area sure is growing, still:

Retail sales over the Internet grew by 28.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2002 compared to the same quarter a year earlier, rising to $14.33 billion, the US Commerce Department said on Monday . The gain was the smallest year-over-year increase since the second quarter's 24.5 percent gain, Commerce said in its quarterly report on sales of goods and services over the Internet or other electronic networks or by e-mail. Payment does not have to be made online for the transaction to be counted. Unlike most economic indicators released by Commerce, the data are not adjusted for seasonal or holiday-related variations, a limitation that sharply restricts their usefulness to analysts. Commerce began separately tracking e-commerce sales in late 1999. In comparison with the third quarter, sales grew by 29.3 percent in the last three months of 2002. Overall retail sales grew by a slower 5.1 percent compared to the third quarter. That brought e-commerce sales as a percentage of overall sales to their highest level since Commerce began its tracking, a minuscule 1.6 percent of total retail purchases.
Source: Yahoo News
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