Footwear Consumer 2030
There are several examples of sectors once considered traditional, who have subsequently evolved into exclusively online. One example of this is the movie rental business, dominated at some point by giant Blockbuster, who in 2006 was said to have a market value of roughly 500 million US dollars, and which ended up closing all its stores in 2013. This business was completly replaced by online renting, online download and online streaming. A similar process is impacting the music business, with well know chain stores selling CDs closing or downsizing operations, such as the Virgin Megastores, originally founded by Sir Richard Branson. The company had hundreds of stores worldwide in the 1990s, but has lost a large number of stores in recent years, and current operations are mainly concentrated in the Middle East. Online versus brick and mortar shopping
Examples such as these are common and have led to a heated debate around the growing importance of the online commerce. Fears that the brick and mortar business might be endangered by the popularity of online sales have been on the news in the last few years. Although, there is a tendency to see increases on ecommerce amongst several brands, we believe that online commerce won't replace the sales experience at a high street or shopping centre stores. In 2013, global B2C ecommerce sales reached 1.25 trillion US dollars, growing by 18.3% from the previous year. eMarketer forecasts this will evolve to annually at two digit growth rates, resulting in 2.36 trillion US dollars’ worth of ecommerce sales by 2017.
Figure 14 Worldwide Business to Consumer eCommerce Sales Trillions US dollars
2.5
50%
2.0
40%
1.5
30% 22,3%
1.0
1.06
14.8%
10%
0.5
0.0
20%
Annual Change
Trillion USD
2.36
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
0%
Source: eMarketer In the last five years, B2C ecommerce as a percentage of global GDP has been increasing steady, from a 0.54% in 2009 to a 0.92% in 2013. Forecasts by Statista indicate this growing ecommerce activity will continue and should reach 1.61% of the global GDP by 2018.
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