U.S. Online Sales Up… For Some
By Anna Johnson on April 28th, 2009Research by Forrester Research and Shop.org, indicates that U.S. online retail sales increased by 11 percent in the first quarter of 2009.
As reported by eMarketer, Forrester and Shop.org confined their research to 80 companies. 58 percent of these experienced higher online sales than in the same period in 2008. 44 percent experienced increases of more than 10 percent, 14 percent had increases of up to 10 percent, and 13 percent saw no change in their level of sales.
Whilst the outlook for online sales is positive, the increases were predominately experienced by consumer brand manufacturers and retailers with both a web and bricks-and-mortar presence.
While 70 percent of these companies reported online sales increases, over half of the online-only retailers – about 60 percent – actually reported Web sales declines.
Here’s one interpretation of these somewhat contradictory results: most online retailers are suffering from the economic downturn like everyone else. The reason why multichannel companies are doing well online is because their customers are buying less from their bricks-and-mortar stores and more from their online stores. This is presumably because shopping online is (or is perceived to be) cheaper.
On the other hand, web-only Amazon is doing very well online (see below), and I wonder whether this sample of 80 companies is really that representative of online retailers in general…
Source: eMarketer, “US Online Sales Up,” eMarketer, April 27, 2009
