E-Tail grows at a steady pace

Forrester research released the results of its 2010 survey on online retail. No surprises, but only a confirmation of trends…sounds familiar doesn’t it!  US and EU 17 will see a steady increase in online sales each year of 10%, topping of at 279 billion $  in the US and 134 billion EUR in Eu17 in 2015.  By 2015 online sales will represent approx. 8% of the total retail sales.

In the last year US has seen a growth of 18% (and EU 13%) in online sales, but a lot more offline sales are also “web influenced”.  The adjusted e-commerce model is different from the 1.0 web commerce model. Business drive on 3 basic idea’s to connect with customers:

• act local
• think social
• be mobile

Look at Groupon (f.i.), who sells with the social leverage products of a local market, and can be reached 24/7 thanks to (mobile) social media.  This is off course only one small example…but many others are out there! 
Computers, apparel and consumer electronics are hot items to sell online, besides cars, travel and prescription drugs….

It’s needless to say,  classical brick-and-mortar stores are looking at a challenge because online and “web influenced” shopping in the mobile world will suppress 0.0 retail…some offline retailers are already getting trouble like Borders bookstores who filed a chapter 11 in the US to be protected against creditors. Check out the business modeling page, on more insights how to deal with this shift!

Groupon – already the hype of 2011?

As always….a young and entrepreneurial spirit, Andrew Mason, comes up with an idea to create added value for customers and suppliers. A basic idea, group leveraged discounts, transferred to the flat world.

We all know group discounts….it’s an easy principle: a large group can negotiate small prices because of the size of the order. Mason transferred this system to the flat world and into the social media with Groupon. It’s already the fastest growing company in the US, and now wants to concur the world.  You register and log-on through the groupon of your town. Groupon will each day sell a product or service with a huge (up to 50%) discount. The only condition is that enough people by the offer. In the US they’re already working with major companies, but in Europe for instance they’re offering small local initiatives (at a very good price!)…..Once they can open the box with the big deals from the major companies they’re bound to get huge!  To get word aroudn Groupon uses social media channels, every Groupon-member who tells about the deals through Facebook, Twitter, Netlog, … gets a 6 EUR in his account everytime an interested member steps into a Groupon deal.

Google already saw a huge opportunity and offered up to  6 billion Dollar for Groupon but Mason keeps the company under his own wings.  Will he be able to maintain his market share since there are a lot of new initiatives starting up with the same idea, f.i. Living Social (which is a Amazon.com partner and sold a value of 1,3 mio EUR in Amazon.com-coupons in only 24h time, with every coupon was paid 10 EUR but had a value of 20 EUR), Groupprice, Localdealsites, vente-exclusive, ….

Future will tell, but this will get huge in 2011!
You can share your hot deals and remarks through the comment section.

[Update: january, 26 2011: Today Google announces Google Offers a site where discounted offers will be posted for a limited time frame.  When Google offers will be operational was not yet announced! - As I predicted....this is going to the hype of 2011!]