What is the Chase Paymentech Cyber Holiday Pulse Index?
The Chase Holiday Pulse is a unique year-over-year (YoY) view of the dynamic ecommerce and in-store retail market during the busy holiday shopping season. By highlighting key dates such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Pulse provides online and in-store shopping statistics and insights that the market can use as indicators of consumer behavior and trends.
What does Pulse track?
For ecommerce, Chase Holiday Pulse combines aggregated payment processing data from 50 of Chase Paymentech’s largest U.S. ecommerce merchants and shows the daily percentage of growth, year-over-year, in dollar sales and transaction counts. Pulse also compares the daily average ticket amount for the same ecommerce merchants from the 2011 holiday season to this year. The data represents online purchases for which customers used credit cards, debit cards, gift card redemptions, and alternative methods of payment. Pulse ecommerce data is not intended to evaluate any one particular merchant and does not claim to represent the entire ecommerce industry as a whole; rather, it provides a consistent set of merchant indicators year-over-year based on a select set of Chase Paymentech’s largest ecommerce merchants.
How many years has Pulse been tracking online holiday shopping statistics?
Pulse was originally created in 2006 to test the idea that Cyber Monday was a real phenomenon. In subsequent years, the program was expanded to identify year-over-year changes, trends in average ticket size, the influence of Black Friday on ecommerce, and vertical market insights. 2012 is the seventh year that Pulse will be published.
Why do you use a ‘day-over-day’ view, rather than a ‘date-over-date’ view?
The Thanksgiving holiday is the traditional start of the holiday shopping season. Because Thanksgiving does not occur on the same date every year, the peak shopping dates (such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday) shift from year to year. By using a ‘day-over-day’ methodology and anchoring our analysis around Thanksgiving Day, we can see trends in peak shopping days and weeks in a more consistent manner.
What makes the Pulse better than other sources that track online holiday shopping?
Pulse offers unique attributes that add value beyond other sources of holiday shopping statistics. The ecommerce data is updated every business day and reflects empirical merchant purchase data – it is not a consumer sample, a survey, or an estimate. In addition, our analysis of the data can isolate trends that others may miss.
Why do you track ecommerce payment settlements?
Settlement data is the most accurate measure of actual purchase transactions. When an online purchase is made, there are two separate events that make up the payment process: authorization and settlement. Settlement activity reflects completed sales, as it does not occur until the product has shipped, and the settlement value is the actual amount of the transaction. For various reasons, merchants may initiate more authorization requests than actual purchase transactions, and those requests may be for different amounts than the actual purchases.
I thought Mondays were supposed to be the busiest shopping days. Why do Tuesdays appear to be busier?
For ecommerce transactions, Pulse tracks settlements, which often do not occur until the next day. This is the day that the merchants receive payment and the day that the consumer’s payment card is charged. As a result, a large portion of Cyber Monday transactions actually show on the following day.
Does the Pulse Index track global sales?
Although we process payments for merchants around the world, only U.S. transactions are included.
Which companies are in the included in Pulse?
We do not reveal the names of the companies whose data comprises the Chase Holiday Pulse.
How much of the activity is coming from mobile commerce?
Pulse ecommerce data includes mobile, online, and other CNP transactions. We believe that this broad view across all ecommerce channels is necessary to ensure analytical integrity.
What are your predictions for the remainder of the season?
We do not make predictions about the future performance of the ecommerce or in-store retail market. The Chase Holiday Pulse is for general information purposes only. Pulse (including all data, charts, and commentary) is intended solely to illustrate key ecommerce and retail spend trends, like the percentage of growth, year over year, for dollar sales and transaction counts, as well as the differences in average purchase amount between last holiday season and this one.
