Looks like the online retailer's are doing just fine Total Holiday Spending Hits $25 Billion, thank you very much. This is a 25% increase over 2004 and the trend is probably not surprising to anyone that tracks these numbers (I don't). However it would be interesting to account for how many consumers are repeat buyers and just buying more, and what percentage are new consumers. The techno anthropologists would then be able to use this data to calculate rate of adoption and make inferences about what this means to the culture, the society, etc.
However most lay people would probably conclude (and correctly I think) that these numbers just reflect the fact that more and more people are becoming comfortable with the medium, and therefore this not only has an impact on online consumption, but on online healthcare, law, education etc. In other words the markets as conversations meme rages on. As consumers become more accustomed to participating in online conversations they will notice when the conversation is lacking from other providers, given the level of conversation that happens at Amazon, eBay and others.
As Geoff Moore likes to say Darwin is at work here and those providers that don't realize that are likely to be on there way to extinction, although the rate that this happens will vary, and in some cases could take years or a generation to play out (death of a thousand cuts).
Carlos, thanks for citing that overall 25% increase in '05 online holiday sales -- makes Best Buy's 40% look even more impressive...
Posted by: Graeme Thickins | January 09, 2006 at 11:49 AM