Best Reading of the Day - Entry 0078 Retail Death Spiral

Karen Webster over on pymts.com has an analysis on physical retail stores and the impact eCommerce is having and will continue to have on those stores:

http://www.pymnts.com/briefing-room/acquiring/merchant-solutions/2014/the-coming-physical-retail-death-spiral

Here is a snippet from that article:

It’s the 1950’s, and the birth of the shopping mall. Before then, all shopping was done at local merchants. Malls changed all of that, making the shopping experience efficient (lots of stores under one roof), social (it was something women and friends and families did together) and fun (there was lots to do). All shopping was done in physical stores and, increasingly, away from the local merchant scene that had defined retail for centuries.

In 1999, five years after the launch of Amazon.com and the year in which Jeff Bezos was namedTime magazine’s Person of the Year, eCommerce accounted for only 0.5 percent of retail sales. Even today, with the diffusion of the Internet and mobile devices, eCommerce accounts for less than 6 percent of all sales, but it’s growing rapidly.
Happy reading,

J.W. Gant