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The cost of e-commerce is weighing heavily on brick-and-mortar retailers, who have successfully increased digital sales but thinned their margins in the process, according to a new study from retail strategy firm HRC Advisory released Tuesday.
That shift has led operating earnings as a percentage of sales to decline by up to 25%, in part due to the major investments retailers are making in e-commerce and omnichannel plus the higher cost of e-commerce fulfillment, the study found. Returns of online orders are particularly expensive and returned merchandise is difficult to resell at full value, HRC added.
Although brick-and-mortar retailers have successfully increased their digital efforts, momentum is slowing. Online sales growth for 11 public department store chains fell from 39.3% in 2012 to 18.6% in 2015, HRC said, while the online sales growth rate for 22 specialty stores declined from 17.5% in 2012 to 9% last year....
While similarities exist across all age groups, some key differences emerge immediately. First the similarities: Most U.S. adults intend to spend the same amount or more while shopping online during this season as compared to a year ago. 85% of U.S. Adults 18 and older plan to do so, ranging from 86% of 18-54 year olds to 83% of those 55 and older. Additionally, most consumers across all age groups plan to spend at least as much as they did last year on the top retail categories of Clothing and Electronics. Roughly three-quarters of U.S. adults plan to spend at least as much this season as they did last year on Clothing and Shoes and roughly two-thirds of U.S. adults plan to spend the same or more on Electronics. However, Clothing and Electronics spending plans do vary by age group with younger shoppers more likely than older consumers to spend the same or more on Electronics (75% of A18-34 vs. 57% of A65+) and Clothing (82% of A18-34 vs. 71% of A65+ on Children’s Clothing, 78% of A18-34 vs. 63% of A65+ on Shoes).
Beyond spending plans, younger consumers are more prone to being influenced by digital and mobile media than older shoppers are in their Clothing purchases. Overall, 1 in 4 U.S. adults report that they are influenced by Email Ads and 1 in 5 by Internet Ads in their Clothing purchases. More U.S. adults are influenced by Email (26%) than Broadcast TV (21%) and more by Internet Ads (19%) than Cable TV (13%) in their Clothing purchases. Digital influence is more pronounced among 18-34 year olds shopping for Clothing: 1 in 3 are Influenced by Email Ads, 1 in 4 by Internet Ads and 1 in 5 by Social Media. This younger demo is also twice as likely as the general adult population to be influenced by Mobile Video, Blogs or Web Radio. 35-54 year olds parallel the general adult population in digital media influence on Clothing purchases and 55-64 year olds are a bit less influenced by these media. Fewer clothing shoppers 65 and older are influenced by any media but twice as many of them are influenced by Internet Ads (10%) than Cable TV (5%)....
Global e-commerce generates more than $1.2 million in revenue every 30 seconds, according to a new report from the Associated Chambers of Commerce of India (ASSOCHAM) and Deloitte.
Further, the study found, social networks are contributing significantly to this revenue. Social media pages provide information regarding new products in the market, user reviews and ratings of the product, recommendations, and increasingly, the ability to buy directly from the site, rather than requiring a visit to a retailer's dedicated e-commerce site.
"Social media also helps e-tailers to build brand awareness by responding to customer queries," said D.S. Rawat, secretary general of ASSOCHAM. "Seasonal sales and offers are displayed in social networks to reach maximum number of people. E-tailers have even started to motivate customers with reward points to provide feedback on the product on social networks. Prospective customers also interact with users of the product or service on social networks before making purchase decision."...
Ecommerce in The Netherlands is still growing. Last year, the online retail industry increased by 8.4% to reach 13.96 billion euros. During the last six months of 2014, the ecommerce industry even grew harder than it ever did for the last five years.
When we mix these percentages together, it shows that 17.6% of all purchases (products as well as services) in The Netherlands happens online. With regards to the consumer retail industry it seems that the share of products being sold online is about 7.6% (2013: 6.6%). The growth of consumer spending is mainly due to the growth of online spending, says Wijnand Jongen, director of branche association Thuiswinkel.org....
Lately, with the onslaught of ecommerce boom in this country, for SMBs and present online retailers, the concern has shifted from “how to launch an online store” to “how to launch an efficient online store.
Ecommerce solution providers, like us- Zepo, are always digging for innovative approaches with which online selling could be made easy. So, we recently compiled the list of elements which although being crucial to an online store are often neglected.
Please find them below but let explicitly clear that they are in no particular order....
Wal-Mart Stores said Tuesday that online sales broke company records, with more than 1.5 billion pages viewed on Walmart.com between Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday. The retailer said mobile sales accounted for about 70 percent of traffic to Walmart.com during the period.
Wal-Mart also said same-day pickups set records too, with orders up 70 percent from the same period last year.
But online sales across the board for retailers grew a smaller-than-expected 8 percent on Cyber Monday after web promotions before and during the Thanksgiving weekend robbed business from what has traditionally been the busiest day of the year for Internet shopping.
As of 6 p.m. EST Monday, data from IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark showed Cyber Monday sales grew sharply slower than comScore data over the weekend which showed a 32 percent rise in online orders on Thanksgiving and 26 percent on Black Friday.
Cyber Monday sales were projected to rise between 13-15 percent. The results highlight the waning importance of traditional shopping days like Cyber Monday and Black Friday, which until a few years ago kicked off the holiday shopping season....
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The retail model of the future will be a radically different experience from today, largely driven by the changing shopping demands of the younger hyper-connected consumer. Bricks-and-mortar retailing will remain to be a very significant part in retail, however the lines between channels will erode at the benefit of both the customer and the business. Advances in technology will significantly improve the relationships between retailers and customers, much the way analytics is already doing to online shopping.
Real opportunity lies in responding to this change, focusing on delivering a truly integrated and seamless omni-channel experience. The future of retail is an exciting one, and over the next few years we expect to see a number of key developments taking place in stores around the globe...
The new avatar of shopping is evident with eCommerce squeezing in stealthily. Though, the online retail shopping is yet to have a sizable chunk of the total retail market the digital medium definitely has an impact on the offline shopping as well.
According to the latest Nielsen report, about half of products buying decisions people make are spontaneous and unplanned. This provides brands an ample opportunity to influence and connect people online that could eventually drive them to non-replenish purchase.
The report highlights online elements that influence non-replenish purchases and what are the top online activities of shoppers before they actually hit the store. It reveals that online resources – includes hearing and researching on social media, looking on retail websites, looking at brand manufacturer website, looking on coupon websites – have a greater impact on such non-replenish purchases than recommendation or ads. Nearly 7% of time shoppers recall using such online resources....
In previous research, men have also been found to shop online more often than women, so the results here shouldn't be too surprising. But as before, it’s not clear what that exactly means.
In an era when the lines between shopping online and in store are ever more blurred, it may behoove researchers to tease out exactly what "shopping" entails. Do men research products online without buying? Are they really buying more online than women? In the omnichannel/no-channel era, this would be useful to know.
This report does show how profoundly mobile has driven online shopping, and gives some clues about how to fashion mobile browsers vs apps....
According to research based on an analysis of more than 100,000 e-commerce stores, 50.3% of the traffic in virtual shops are from mobile devices (being 40.3% from mobile phones and 10% from tablets) and only 49.7% from computers.
It may sound crazy, but the fact is that mobile commerce is already a reality. Also according to research, the Google search traffic comprised 18% of traffic from computers and only 12% for mobile phones.
These data seem to show that computers are being used for research products, while mobile devices for spontaneous purchases, which are instigated from Social Media, Email Marketing and SMS Marketing. The increase in purchases on mobile devices also brings another exciting trend, which we are calling “always buying”....
Eyeballs have been shifting aggressively to mobile in recent years but the bucks - at least for ecommerce - remained anchored to the desktop. That is now changing according to a new study by Criteo.
The advertising optimization platform analyzed individual transaction data covering over $130 billion of annual sales across more than 3,000 online retailers and travel advertisers recently and discovered that across its extensive network mobile now accounts for almost 30 per cent of ecommerce transactions.
And the company predicts that it will reach 50 per cent in the US in the near term.Criteo also outlines what it sees as five new mobile shopping trends....
A new study of top e-commerce websites found these practices—called discriminatory pricing or price steering—are much more widespread than was previously understood.
The study, by a team of computer scientists at Northeastern University, tracked searches on 16 popular e-commerce sites. Six of those sites used the pricing techniques; none of the sites alerted consumers to that fact.
Among the study’s findings: Travel-booking sites Cheaptickets and Orbitz charged some users searching hotel rates an average $12 more per night if they weren’t logged into the sites, and Travelocity charged users of Apple Inc.’s iOS mobile operating system $15 less for hotels than other users....
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Profits for brick and mortar retailers are getting hit hard as they try to compete by offering e-commerce sales.