Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR), in conjunction with Greenfield Online, today announced the results of the latest Forrester Online Retail Index. According to the 23rd survey in this monthly series, total US spending on online sales increased from $3.6 billion in October to $4.9 billion in November. The number of households shopping online increased to 16.8 million in November, from 13.7 million in October. Consumers spent an average of $293 per person in November, compared with $265 in October.

“While zero-percent financing deals got people to shop offline in October, people shifted their attention to purchasing holiday gifts in November,” said Christopher M. Kelley, analyst at Forrester. “In doing so, they went online to seek out the best deals they could in an attempt to stretch their dollars as far as possible.”

About The Index
The Forrester Online Retail Index measures, on a monthly basis, the growth and seasonality of online shopping based on data collected from online shoppers. The Index is based on 5,000 responses during the first nine business days of the following month from an online panel developed by Greenfield Online. The survey results for November were fielded from December 3 through December 10, 2001.

The monthly panel is weighted to Forrester Research’s Consumer Technographics® Benchmark Panel, a survey of 90,000 US members of a consumer mail panel developed by NFO Worldwide, a market research firm. Data was weighted to demographically represent the US population. The Benchmark Panel was fielded from December 2000 to January 2001.

Note: Owing to changes in the methodology of the Index, beginning in April 2000, we discourage making year-to-year comparisons for any particular category until April 2001, although general top-line trends appear stable over that period.