Online Shopping Cuts Into In-store Sales
More and more people are shopping online for their holiday gifts. This is evident by the fact that in-store sales continue to slow while online store sales continue serious double digit growth year after year.
Predictions for this coming holiday season, which starts the day after Thanksgiving and goes through Christmas Eve, is expected to have a 21% growth over last year's sales according to a recent study of shoppers.
Online dollar sales in the 2007 holiday season are expected to exceed 2006 numbers by $6 billion. This should bring holiday sales figures for 2007 to around $33 billion.
During this same time, the National Retail Federation is predicting only a 4% growth in store sales vs. 2006 numbers for the same timeframe. So, what are the big retailers going to do? They are going online!
The major department stores now all have online outlets, some with in-store pickup of the items you purchased online. Wal-Mart, for instance will ship any purchase made online to a Wal-Mart store near you for free. All you have to do is go into the store and pickup your online purchases. What is their hope is that you will do additional shopping while in the store.
What Does This Mean to the Small to Medium Size Business?
It could mean that if they do not adapt to the changing marketplace they could go out of business very soon.
All these facts makes me ask the question, if the big retailers are struggling with same-store sales vs. 2006 then what is happening to the small business who is competing with the big stores? Read Full Story
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