Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Amazon.com Reporting This Holiday Season Their "Best Ever"

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the at-least-someone-doesn't-need-a-bailout dept.

In a refreshing break from all the doom and gloom, Amazon.com is calling this holiday season their best ever. Reporting a 44 percent rise in the number of items sold, they are refusing to provide actual dollar amounts, so it is still a very subjective measurement. "Amazon customers ordered more than 6.3 million items on Dec. 15, compared with roughly 5.4 million on its peak day last year, the company said. It shipped more than 5.6 million products on its best day, a 44 percent rise over 2007, when it shipped about 3.9 million on its busiest day. The company did not provide dollar figures and wouldn't say whether the average value of orders had changed, and the jumps it reported Friday are in line with increases Amazon has seen since it started releasing the figures in 2002."

4 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. Money is tight by ppz003 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    People are going to look for better deals, and when some item can be found for 20 to 50% less online, often with free shipping, of course they are going to turn to the big internet sites.

  2. Amazon's real skill: hooking the media... by ThousandStars · · Score: 5, Interesting
    ... including /.

    See Slate's Amazon.con: How the online retail giant hoodwinks the press for details on why this story is idiotic:

    Some, but not all, of these accounts went on to concede that Amazon would not provide revenue data for the entire shopping season, or even for its "peak day." Nor would Amazon confirm or deny that one or both of these revenue figures exceeded those for 2007. Without this information, we can't possibly know whether Amazon had a good year in comparison either to other retailers or to its own sales during the previous Christmas shopping season.

    The same reasoning or lack thereof applies to the Kindle (which I don't like for its DRM and other problems), since Amazon won't release sales numbers for it.

    So, did Amazon have their best ever holiday season? Maybe: but we're unlikely to know enough about the metrics used to make this claim to know.

  3. Re:Begs the question - not so much by Itninja · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begs_the_question Just sayin'

    --
    I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
  4. Online is the only way to shop these days by stokessd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The big-box retailers taking over all the specialty shops across the US are actually reducing the diversity of goods available locally (the ACE hardware actually has more depth than Lowes in many areas for example). So aside from the obvious lower prices and "dropped at your door" convenience, there just aren't any local options for lots of us living in generica if "best Buy" doesn't carry your desired trinket.

    Sheldon