According to a survey conducted by comScore and UPS, in the past year, for the first time in history, more people are deciding to do their shopping online as opposed to going to the stores.
The survey included around 5,000 consumers that had at least two online purchases in the three month period. The result showed that 51% of them prefer to do their shopping online, compared to the 48% it had last year.
A trend that goes hand to hand with the rise of online shopping is the development of smartphone technology. More and more people use smartphones to do their shopping and 44% of smartphone user made an online purchase this year, compared to the 41% the last year.
This year, it is expected that around 190 million Americans will do their shopping online, which is more than half the population.
This trend is worrying large retailers that focus on traditional sales departments, like Macy’s, Kohl’s, J.C Penny which all have seen a decline in their sales. Even giants like Walmart and Target only saw a marginal increase in their profits.
One of the things that is killing brick-and-mortar stores is Amazon. This online retail giant saw a rise in their revenues of 19.4% totaling at $94.7 billion in online sales. Amazon easily beats the competition in online sales and the gap keeps getting bigger each year. With the current trends showing a steady rise in online sales and more and more people preferring it over in store purchases, we can only assume Amazon’s sales will continue to rise.