It’s all but certain that when the smoke clears after Q4 holiday shopping in the US, e-commerce will have crossed the $200 billion threshold for the first time. That’s based on extrapolating from data
released today by comScore.
The firm reported that e-commerce in the third quarter was $47.5 billion. That’s up 13 percent vs. Q3 2012. We can probably expect fourth quarter e-commerce spending to be more than $60 billion, which would easily lift the full-year 2013 total to more than $200 billion.
These are impressive figures and the market shows robust growth. However a much bigger and but neglected story is internet-influenced offline spending. Depending on how you define it (to include just products or products and services) online-to-offline shopping is worth well over $1 trillion.
Overall e-commerce is a little less than 6 percent of total US retail spending according to the US Commerce Department. That figure may inch up a bit after Q4, however.
Estimated Quarterly U.S. Retail Sales: Total and E-commerce
Source: US Census Bureau/Commerce Dept (Q2 2013)
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