Consumers Are Now Doing Most of Their Shopping
Online Madeline Farber, 6/8/16, Fortune
For the first time ever, shoppers are
going to the web for most of their purchases. An annual survey by analytics
firm comScore (SCOR, +0.23%) and UPS (UPS, +0.24%)found
that consumers are now buying more things online than in stores.
The survey, now in its fifth year,
polled more than 5,000 consumers who make at least two online purchases in a
three-month period. According to results, shoppers now make 51% of their
purchases online, compared to 48% in 2015 and 47% in 2014.
As online shopping accelerates, so does
the use of smartphones to make purchases. The survey showed that 44% of smartphone
users made buys through their devices, compared to 41% a year ago.
About 190 million U.S. consumers—more
than half the population will shop online this year, according to Forrester
Research, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. That's a wakeup call for retailers,
especially traditional department chains such as Macy's (M, -1.04%),
Nordstrom, J.C Penney (JCP, -2.14%),
and Kohl's (KSS, -0.16%), all of which reported sales slumps. Even big name stores such as Walmart (WMT, +2.68%) and Target (TGT, +1.36%) reported slim sales gains.
One of retail's biggest game changers is
Amazon (AMZN, +1.01%),
which is killing its brick-and-mortar rivals. According to data released by
eMarketer to Fortune, Amazon’s e-commerce revenue rose 15.8%
in the last 12 months, which is roughly the same clip as Wal-Mart. But Amazon
posted $82.7 billion in sales, compared with $12.5 billion for Walmart, and
that chasm in dollars keeps getting wider.
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