Consumers are using the Internet to research products, but still prefer making the actual purchase offline in stores.
Ryan Moss
Research Analyst
The amount of consumers using the Internet as a tool to research products continues to increase, but the amount of e-commerce sales isn’t increasing as much as one would expect. Instead, consumers are simply using the Internet to research products and then are going offline to stores to make their purchases. During 2007, eMarketer estimated that web-influenced store sales totaled about $471 billion, while total retail e-commerce sales were only $136 billion. This means that for every $1 in online sales, the Internet influenced $3.45 worth of store sales.
Furthermore, web-influenced retail store sales and retail e-commerce sales made up 15% of total retail sales during 2007 according to eMarkter estimates. (Forrester Research estimated 27%) As seen in the chart below, eMarketer predicts that this percentage will steadily increase to the point where by 2012 the two will combine to make up 28% of the whole retail sales industry.
Retail firms need to make sure they are prepared for this on going trend. This includes having online catalogs, store and product locators and offering product comparisons.
Tags: E-Commerce, E-Commerce Sales, Internet, Online Sales, Product Research, Retail, Retail Sales, Web-Influenced Sales
