Brazilian Shoppers Led Global Holiday Charge

Cross-border shoppers ramped up their spending during the 2010 holiday selling season, boosting daily sales through FiftyOne Global Ecommerce by 75% worldwide in the days following Thanksgiving. Brazilian consumers led the world, tripling their 2010 average daily sales, and submitting the highest average order values among FiftyOne's largest markets.

In fact no other major market approached the seasonal surge that Brazil generated. While daily sales to Hong Kong and the United Kingdom were 85% higher than their 2010 daily averages, placing their seasonal increases slightly ahead of Canada's (83%) and Germany's (77%), daily sales of U.S. retailers' merchandise to Brazil soared 198% above their 2010 daily averages.

And only Brazilian shoppers significantly increased their average order values during the holiday selling season. While AOV worldwide and in every other major market remained more or less constant compared to the rest of 2010, Brazil's AOV climbed more than 30% to $303 USD during the holiday selling season, edging Hong Kong ($300 USD) and Switzerland ($290 USD) atop FiftyOne's ten biggest markets.

The Fifteen Days of Christmas

The 2010 cross-border holiday selling season followed nearly the exact same pattern for the third consecutive year: Daily sales remained close to their annual averages until increasing sharply on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Then for the next 15 days sales remained significantly higher than normal before dropping off rapidly after a final surge on the Monday following Cyber Monday.

If there's a surprising aspect of this tightly defined season, it's not the abrupt end--cross-border shoppers know to allow longer shipping times to ensure that gifts arrive in time for Christmas--it's the abrupt beginning. Whether triggered by American retailers' traditional promotional cycles, or more broadly by American retailing seasons, international consumers seem to kick off their holiday shopping in concert with domestic consumers.

If the 2011 holiday selling season follows a similar curve, cross-border merchants can prepare by aligning promotions with this two-week window, and by shifting resources to accommodate predictable peak activity within it. Additionally merchants may be able to extend this window with early messaging to loyal customers, or more important, by aggressively communicating expedited shipping options or shorter-than-expected delivery times to global customers who might otherwise give up on U.S. retailers a week after Thanksgiving.

The charts below show: the change in daily sales volume during the holiday selling season vs. the rest of 2010; the change in average order value during the holiday selling season vs. the rest of 2010; and the order curve that the cross-border holiday selling season followed in each of the past three years.

Methodology

Figures on the 2010 holiday selling season are based on all accepted orders from all FiftyOne merchants placed during the 15-day period beginning Tuesday, 23 November, and compared to orders placed during the other 350 days of 2010. The 2008 and 2009 holiday selling seasons are defined as the 15-day periods beginning on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and figures for those years are adjusted to proportionately compare to 2010 figures.