An interesting study from a start-up that monitors the inventory levels of brick-and-mortar stores found that only 5 percent of purchases are made online currently. While some of the categories likely won’t transition much of their sales online, such as food and beverage or furniture, I think a significant portion of the 95 percent of purchases that occur offline will move online eventually.
A large part of the momentum of sales moving online will come from social purchasing, such as the offers made by Groupon, and purchases made directly on social networks, as Apple is doing now with Facebook. Studies have shown that people trust the recommendations of their friends and networks more than advertisements by a wide margin, so as social networks begin to facilitate transactions more actively, the amount of total online purchasing will increase exponentially.
People are also becoming more inclined to share purchasing habits online, such as people are doing now on the nascent social network Blippy, which posts buying behavior for comparison among friends. If someone gets a great bargain on a purchase, their network is made aware of it and can act quickly. Since online shopping has become more secure, sharing purchasing data is less likely to throw up warning flags than it would have a couple of years ago.
Even though a vast number of purchases will always take place offline, no matter how comfortable people get with online buying, e-commerce’s definition is set to become much broader over the course of the next decade. Off-line purchases increasingly will be affected by online information and behavior, because people do more and more product research online. Whether people are buying in groups, buying on social networks, or finding deals based on their network’s purchase history, companies involved in facilitating e-commerce opportunities have much potential for growth.
