While retailers in general are anticipating flagging sales reports, online shopping is expected to grow, up to a 15% increase from last year, giving relief to certain retail exchange traded funds (ETFs). However, the number of online retailers with such optimistic expectations has fallen this year.

Online retailers are more resilient when it comes to the economy as the recent survey from Shop.org implies. The survey of 60 online retailers was conducted for Shop.org from Oct. 1 through 20. Shop.org expects online retail sales to rise 17% for the whole year to $204 billion, reports Cheryl Lu-Lien Tran for The Wall Street Journal.

Consumers are turning to online shopping because it is easier to comparison shop, and some offer free shipping, which in turn saves on higher gas prices. Retailers for the online shoppers are offering more such as product videos, customer reviews, Facebook pages to promote sales and clearance sale pages.

Retail HOLDRs (RTH) are down 23% year-to-date. Among the online retailers that are major components in the fund are Amazon (AMZN), 5.9%; Best Buy (BBY), 4.2%; and Target (TGT), 8.9%.

Tags: Retail & Consumer, RTH