Forrester’s retail forecasts chart how the changing nature of consumer behavior will have an impact on online and offline retail sales over the next five years. During a recent webinar, Forrester detailed five key trends that the forecasts have revealed:

  • Worldwide online retail sales are growing and varied. Asia Pacific is the world’s largest online market; it’s more than twice the size of North America. But online retail in India and China is very different. When considering your online investments, you must take into account not just retail market size but also supply (like organized retail), consumer demand, and infrastructure maturity.
  • Online buyers are spending more and in more categories. In mature markets like the US, online growth is coming from existing buyers spending more online. The typical online buyer has doubled the number of categories from which they buy online over the past five years.
  • Web-influenced sales are greater than online sales. In Western Europe, the Web will influence 45% of offline sales by 2020. Although 93% of retail sales in Western Europe were offline in 2014, an online presence is critical to retailer success — as web-influenced sales were more than three times larger than online sales.
  • Online cross-border retail sales offer opportunities. Cross-border trade gives retailers an opportunity to expand outside their domestic markets with minimum upfront investment. To succeed, retailers must understand the cross-border shopper and how to compete internationally.
  • Mobile commerce sales are increasingly important. Smartphones are taking an increasing share of mobile and tablet commerce. As smartphone screen sizes continue to increase, consumers are more likely to use them to buy goods and services. In addition, tablet adoption is slowing; consumers increasingly see tablets as their third device, after desktops/laptops and smartphones.

To learn how our forecasts can help you with your investment decisions, read our ForecastView overview.