More importantly, she said, a greater number of shoppers are likely to buy because many of them have gone through the stages of familiarization with the Web. Strand said the online holiday shopping season started more slowly this year than in 1999, but the number of shoppers has climbed sharply in the last two weeks. I think it is an interesting trend that people are still procrastinating. There was so much talk that the negative experiences many people had last year would prompt them to get started earlier this year. Instead, I think we can say that it is human nature.
People procrastinate and that is just the way it is.
One finding that surprised Strand was that sales of toys and games dropped 3 percent in the week ending Dec. 10 compared to the previous week. She pointed out that volume for the category was still 130 percent of the baseline week and speculated that perhaps this was one area where people actually did learn a lesson from the problems of 1999.