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Online Fitness, Video Game Spending Outperforms Brick-And-Mortar

Online spending in several key categories, including Sports & Fitness and Video Games, increased and outperformed offline spending during the 2008 holiday season, while overall online and offline spending in other home and luxury-goods categories decreased across the board, according to a study by comScore and SpendingPulse.

The study compared comScore e-commerce data with overall (online and offline) consumer spending data published by MasterCard Advisors’ SpendingPulse Unit, for the period of Nov. 1 - Dec. 24 vs. a year ago (via Retailer Daily), writes Marketing Charts.

According to the study, the top growing online product category for the season was Sport & Fitness, which grew 18% vs. 2007. The category continues to benefit from consumers’ focus on health, and higher comfort levels with purchasing more expensive fitness equipment - such as treadmills and elliptical machines - online, the company said.

The second fastest-growing category was Video Games, Consoles & Accessories, which grew 14% on continued demand for systems such as the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Apparel & Accessories, the only other product category with positive online growth, generated higher sales as a result of retailers’ aggressive discounting and promotions.

“For an online holiday shopping season that recorded a disappointing 3% decline in sales, a positive note is that e-commerce trends outperformed overall consumer spending in several product categories, which is to say that e-commerce continued to capture an increasing share of consumers’ wallet,” said Gian Fulgoni, comScore chairman.

About SpendingPulse: SpendingPulse is an information service provided by MasterCard Advisors, a subsidiary of MasterCard Worldwide. A macro-economic indicator, SpendingPulse reports on national retail and service sales and is based on aggregate sales activity in the MasterCard payments network, coupled with estimates for all other payment forms, including cash and check.