Easter is predicated to generate $14.6 billion in retail sales, and a online retailers account for a very big chunk of that revenue. More and more people are shopping g online, but apparently, customers are also spending more. According to a new study conducted by the National Retail Federation for BIGresearch, online shoppers will spend 72% more than their offline counterparts on Easter related items .

“The average online shopper intends to spend $225 on Easter-related items this year, $96 more than offline shoppers, found the NRF’s study.”

Fact is, only 14.8 percent of customers said they intend to make purchases online for the coming holiday, but the study is still good news for online retailers. The most popular online shopping destinations are discount stores with a market share of 62.6 percent, department stores with a share of 36.6, and specialty stores selling clothes, flowers, jewelry and electronics with a market share of 30.5 percent.

The study estimates the typical online shopper will spend an average of $46 on gifts, $61 on food, $31 on flowers, $26 on decorations and $17 on greeting cards, which is higher than the amount offline shoppers said they intend to spend.

Online shopping is a growing trend, but digital shopping, specifically mobile, seems to be doing more customer orientation, taking over offline shopping in many regards. One example comes from Microsft, who has plans to bring Near-Field Communications to Windows Phone 7. NFC can be used to simplify payments in offline retail destinations, yet, it’s not the one major tech trend involved with digital shopping.

Shopping search engine and price comparison site Twenga today announced it has launched its ‘social shopping’ feature, finding ways to apply big data to targeted digital shopping and marketing efforts. Twenga harnesses data about roughly 350 million products aggregated from more than 160,000 online shops on its sites, and now it enables users to connect with their friends to get shopping recommendations.

Another growing aspect of online shopping is mobile, and it’s expanding on a global scale. Adobe announced that the United Kingdom’s largest online retailer Very.co.uk, is using Adobe Scene7 for its mobile shopping application.