Christmas shopping lead to powerful growth for online stores

Difi Online shopping in NorwayOnline shopping in Norway. Photo: Norway Today Media.

Even more people than usual did part of their Christmas shopping online last year and contributed to the online sales increasing by 15 percent in the fourth quarter compared with the previous year.

In the holiday season last year about 66 percent of the purchases were made in Norwegian online stores  and also around 80 percent of the net revenue, according to the organization Virke.
This meant growth of 15 percent in the fourth quarter last year, compared with the same quarter last year. In the third quarter, the growth was at 12 percent.
More 10.8 million purchases overall were made in Norwegian online stores, for a total of 9.5 billion. The greatest growth by far was in the section “house, home and garden,” with an increase of 61 percent from the corresponding quarter last year. “Active Life” had a revenue growth of 33 percent.
Some of the growth is also due to the weak krone. This means there is less to gain from making purchases from foreign online stores, according to Virke, who also see a clear trend that as a result of  the tax free limit many people make several “small” purchases in foreign online stores.

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today