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Cyber Monday fuels record period for e-commerce in Ireland

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11 January 2016

The latest Visa Europe Irish Consumer Spending Index for December 2015 showed an increase of 16% year-on-year, surpassing the previous record of 13.5% from June 2015 and significantly outperforming growth of 3.8% on the high street.

The rise came after Cyber Monday in November, the busiest day in the year for online shopping, highlighting the rise in popularity of e-commerce in Ireland, with a number of retailers pursuing an omnichannel approach as they launched online sales while stores were closed at Christmas.

Three of the monitored sectors posted double-digit growth in spending over the year to December, namely household goods (10.8%), health & education (10.7%) and recreation & culture (10.7%) – the latter boosted by the release of the new Star Wars film which led to a sharp rise in expenditure at cinemas.

Hotels, restaurants & bars category recorded strong growth as the Christmas festivities saw consumers spend on nights out, albeit at a slower pace than previous months at 7.6%.

One area that saw a marked slowdown in the rate of expansion was clothing & footwear as weather conditions hampered retailers’ efforts to secure sales of winter clothing. Spending was up just 3.9% over the year to December, well down on the 15.7% rise from November and the worst performance for the sector since October 2014.

The Irish Consumer Spending Index is based on spending on all Visa debit, credit and prepaid cards which are used to make an average of 110 million transactions every quarter and account for €1 in €3 of all Irish consumer spending. It is produced in conjunction with Markit, a specialist provider of economic indices, who analyse and adjust the raw data to ensure it provides an accurate indication of consumer spending trends.

TechCentral Reporters

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