Online retail sales sustained its double-digit growth rate year-over-year, though sales from offline stores are declined indicating that customers are more comfortable with the online shopping than offline stores. According to a survey by Forrester Research Inc, online retail sales in 2007 reached $175 billion, a 21% increase over $144.6 billion in 2006.
Online retail sales sustains double-digit growth rate
Online sales have seen a slight decline in the growth rate, but sustained its double digit growth rate in 2007. The sales have increased to $175 billion in 2007 to that of $144.6 billion in 2006, but the growth rate has dropped to 21% in the year 2007 compared to that of 29% in the previous year.
Number of online consumers increased over the years
Buying products online has become a regular experience for U.S Internet users. According to e-marketer, the number of U.S consumers who have purchased online is more than doubled from 22% in June 2000 to 49% in September 2007. This shows that the online retailers have attracted the US consumers to buy products online and also the consumers purchasing online increased as they are more comfortable purchasing online rather than offline stores.
Top 500 online retailers dominated sales in 2007
According to the Internet Retailer, America’s 500 largest online retailers account for 61% of all e-commerce sales in 2007. Their combined sales grew to $101.7 billion in 2007, an increase of 21.6% from online sales of $83.6 billion in the previous year. In 2007 top 100 online retailers account for $87.7 billion of e-commerce sales, an increase of 22.5% from $71.6 billion in 2006. The top online retailers have dominated the retail sales in the America in the past two years which shows that the online retail market is gradually getting concentrated with the top players.
Online retailers investing on acquiring & retaining customers
According to a study conducted by Forrester Research, online retailers allocate 53% of their marketing budgets to online customer acquisition and about 21% for the customer retention. According to the survey, retailers say that search engine marketing is the most effective method of acquiring customers. And addressing customers security concerns make online retail even more regular and retain the customers.
Online retailers beat offline stores in customer satisfaction
Customers are more satisfied and had comfortable shopping online than offline stores. According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ASCI) 100 point scale, e-commerce’s overall score measured 80. Online retail scored 83 in 2007, up 2.5% from last year’s index. Offline retail score 74.4 on the scale. As per ACSI, customer satisfaction with online retail sales surpassed offline retail by 11.6% in 2007.
Though there is a slight decline in the growth rate, the online retail sales are continuously growing over the years as online shopping is becoming more popular among the customers.
