It’s enough to make one wonder how any brick-and-mortar stores are surviving.
What’s happening with online retail sales in the U.S.?
Forrester Research recently dove into a pool of statistics to produce some interesting findings.
According to Forrester’s five year e-commerce forecast, online retail sales will reach $334 billion this year and will grow to $480 billion by 2019. That’s driven by an all-time high in people comfortable with buying online.
“Already, 69 percent of the U.S. online population regularly buys products online, with clothing, consumer electronics, and computers generating about a third of all online shopping dollars in the U.S.,” says Forrester.
Forrester, one of the most influential business and tech research and advisory firms in the world, also believes categories that used to experience more online buying resistance — take furniture and auto parts, for instance –will experience “compound annual growth rates of 15 percent and 11 percent, respectively, over the next five years as shoppers become more comfortable researching and buying these products online.”
The most mind-blowing finding?
Forrester predicts that by 2019, music (the original driver of e-commerce growth) will be “nearly all digital.”
