Sorry. Didn't mean to sound the alarm in such a negative-sounding way. But I did want to capture your attention and then ask you to think about e-commerce, as an industry, in an entirely different way.
ComScore stated that the entire e-com industry (not including Travel) in 2009 was worth $129.8 Billion. If you’re like me, you may find that figure somewhat shocking and alarmingly small.
After all, as taxpayers, we wrote a check for $183 Billion to just one company, AIG, to keep them afloat. Meaning that the check we gave AIG was $50BB more than that of all of e-commerce in aggregate sales. Them’s the facts.
Meanwhile the U.S. Census Bureau states that the size of what I’m calling Real Retail (meaning when consumers walk into a store, restaurant or auto dealership and buy stuff) is worth $ 4.13 Trillion. Stated differently, ecommerce hovers somewhere around 3.5% of what retail generates. And for lots of reasons, some predict e-commerce won’t grow to 10% of all retail, at least in our lifetime.
Lately, I've come to calling e-commerce what it really is…a nice-sized industry that is not the salvation for major retailers and brands, but rather, a small sales channel for most of... Read more
Archive for Matthew Greene 
Does e-Commerce Really Matter?
Posted by Matthew Greene on September 7th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
