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'Tis the weekend of intense shopping

Shoppers
Last-minute shoppers at an Alexandria, Virginia, mall
 
December 20, 1997
Web posted at: 4:25 p.m. EST (2125 GMT)

(CNN) -- With Christmas only a few days away, frenzied consumers were expected to crowd stores looking for last-minute gifts.

According to the International Council of Shopping Centers, the Saturday before Christmas has -- for the last 10 years -- been the busiest shopping day of the year.

Some people may panic, because they still don't have a present for their loved ones, but others may just keep their cool and look for bargains.

Many retailers apparently were trying to reduce their glut of merchandise by cutting prices in a last-ditch effort to sway those undecided procrastinators and boost Christmas sales.

That strategy, by the way, might pay off.

Last year, 41 percent of all holiday shopping was done in the final eight days of the season, according to industry figures.

A survey released earlier this week by a South Carolina research group found that 36 percent of respondents had more than a third of their shopping left to do. Of that group, 54 percent said they would wait until the last minute to take advantage of sales.

Internet sales on the rise

This holiday season marks the first time that ordinary people, not Net-savvy gearheads, are shopping on the World Wide Web, cementing 1997 as the year the Internet went mainstream.

As more people who would otherwise prowl the mall or thumb through catalogs take a look online, well-known retailers like Gap and Lands' End are offering merchandise on the Web.

"This quarter is going to be the biggest quarter ever" for online sales, said Andrew Kantor, editor-in-chief of Internet Shopper, a magazine catering to the digital consumer. "Online shopping is hitting the mainstream and real, honest-to- goodness, ordinary people are shopping online."

Santa with kids
Two children tell Santa their holiday wishes
 

Online retailing is still in its early stages. But more consumers are shopping that way because they've recently bought computers, and they're less worried about thieves stealing their credit card number from the Internet.

Moreover, "you don't have to fight crowds, you don't have to park, you don't have to deal with sales people," said Sam Kline, a marketing consultant in Los Angeles who shops on the Net for comic books and entertainment merchandise. "And there's something really neat about buying something on the Internet and having it show up a few days later. When the mailman brings it, it's kind of fun."

Shopping on the Internet was only a dream in 1995, when only a small fraction of the population was online and hardly any retail sites were successful. But over the last two years, the Internet has flourished, and more than 40 million people are online in 1997, up from 27 million a year ago, according to IntelliQuest Information Group and Zona Research.

Popular products sold online include computer hardware and software, books, music, flowers and travel tickets.

However, Forrester Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, says only one in four wired people buy online.

Correspondent Gary Tuchman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 
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