E-Commerce
On a Steady Rise
By Susan Kuchinskas
New estimates released Friday from the Census Bureau of the U.S. Department
of Commerce show U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the second quarter
increased significantly over last year and from the previous quarter.
The chart of retail e-commerce sales shows a series of waves and
troughs, with a steady ascent to last quarters' $12.477 billion
in online sales.
That number represents an increase of 27.8 percent from the same
quarter last year and a 4.6 percent increase in sales from the first
quarter of 2003. Second-quarter 2003 online sales -- between April
and June -- accounted for 1.5 percent of total retail sales, slightly
above the 1.2 percent of total sales they represented in the second
quarter of 2002.
That 27.8 percent year-over-year increase means the major e-commerce
players, Amazon.com and eBay, are doing a great job, according to
Robert Leathern, commerce analytics group director and senior analyst
for market research firm Nielsen//NetRatings.
"Online retail is growing at a pace substantially and significantly
higher than all retail," Leathern told internetnews.com. "That's
a pretty significant difference."
But Leathern says there's a more important story that these numbers
don't tell.
"There's a significant influence component of online information
to offline sales," Leathern said. "That's a much harder
number to pin down."
He noted that brick-and-mortar stores like Wal-Mart, Target, Home
Depot and Barnes & Noble are still struggling to drive online
consumers to their offline stores and then back to the Web.
"If you compare the number of people who go to a Target or
Wal-Mart on a monthly basis with those who go to these companies'
Web sites, there's a really great difference in those percentages."
That means, according to Leathern, that there's further e-commerce
growth potential for normal channel retailers.
But they'll have to learn how to work this channel or suffer the
consequences.
"If more and more people are buying online," Leathern
said, "if these companies don't have a Web presence and aren't
interacting with customers online, they're going to lose out."
Leathern said the success of Amazon.com and eBay translates to
better online opportunity for small and mid-sized merchants. While
the idea of a standalone store doesn't make sense any more, he said,
smaller companies can take advantage of the super powers' clout
and mass reach.
Source: http://www.internetnews.com/stats/article.php/3067791
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