Blog: Retail Ecommerce Spending to Grow 13.7% in Q4 2010

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Ecommerce spending is expected to grow 13.7% to $51.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010, topping last year’s Q4 sales of $45.2 billion, according to a new forecast published by eMarketer.

Strong online holiday sales will push annual ecommerce sales to $162.4 billion for full-year 2010, up 12.7% over 2009. Online holiday sales will represent an estimated 23.7% of online retail sales in 2010, underlining the importance that November and December have on retailers’ annual ecommerce sales.

One reason for the uptick is shoppers continue to shift a greater share of their holiday spending from stores to the Internet. As principal analyst Jeffrey Grau writes in his upcoming holiday ecommerce report:

[Consumers] do so to avoid crowded malls, find bargains and locate unusual or popular items that are unavailable in stores. Cost-conscious consumers also see online shopping as a way to spend wisely. They can go to coupon sites and shopping blogs and communities to learn about bargains. They can also research purchases to find cheaper alternatives.

Another positive for ecommerce is online shoppers are more affluent than consumers in general, and affluents have returned to shopping, as evident by the postive sales numbers reported by upscale department stores like Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus.

Mobile commerce and social commerce are also much more mature than last year. Far more retailers are expecting customers to use smartphones to read customer reviews, compare prices and locate items that may be out of stock. Meanwhile, digitally literate shoppers will continue to follow retailers on Facebook and Twitter to learn about special promotions and in-store events as well as partake in contests intended to stir positive buzz.

Posted: October 27, 2010. Filed under: Consumers & E-Commerce, Retail  

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Blog: Is Barcode Scanning the Key to Amazon’s Mobile Retail Dominance?

It’s certainly a big piece. Barcode scanners are not widely adopted in the US – yet – but consumer awareness is rising fast. The popularity of the RedLaser iPhone app, which topped five million downloads earlier this month, is a sign of what’s to come. To keep pace, Amazon just added scanning capability to its iPhone app.

As my colleague Jeff Grau noted in his June 2010 “Mobile Shopping from In-Store: A Potential Game Changer” report (full version available here to Total Access clients only), shoppers who scan barcodes to compare prices, locate product reviews and create wish lists are still in the minority. Not surprisingly, Generation Y shoppers, who were raised on the internet and view their mobile devices as an extension of themselves, are the early adopters. They are the ones pushing retailers to offer a more interactive in-store shopping experience.

But clearly, they aren’t the only ones. According to the September 2010 “ScanLife Mobile Barcode Trend Report” from Scanbuy, a provider of mobile barcode solutions, traffic generated from scans has climbed 700% since January 2010.

Price comparison is a key driver of this increase in scanning. In a survey conducted by BuzzBack Market Research for NCR, 43% of consumers in nine major markets, including the US, said they view barcode scanning to find the best prices as an important way to give them more control over the shopping experience.

With its competitive pricing, efficient service and extremely well optimized product catalog, Amazon benefits directly from the steep increase in barcode scanning activity. Adding the capability to its own app only increases Amazon’s competitive advantage, not just over brick-and-mortar retailers but other online merchants as well. As ReadWriteWeb put it succinctly:

With Amazon’s new barcode-scanning technology, it’s not so much of a global price comparison engine but one that answers the simple question: “I wonder if this is cheaper on Amazon?”

Integrating the scanning capability is a smart move for Amazon because it removes friction from the buying process and enables interested consumers to pull the trigger on a purchase right from within the app.

The takeaway: barcode scanning is slowly transforming the in-store shopping experience. But if Amazon has anything to say about it, barcode scanning will make the shopping and buying experience more mobile than ever.

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