The digital shopping revolution has led not only to billions of digital transactions, but also drives significant shares of offline commerce. Forrester Research expects web-influenced offline sales in Asia-Pacific to grow even faster than purely digital sales as a share of the overall marketplace.
In July 2016, the firm forecast that by 2020, nearly 30% of retail sales in Asia-Pacific will be made offline, but inspired by online activity.
In 2015, 13% of retail sales were digital, but one in five were offline, web-influenced sales. By 2020, about 20% of sales will be digital, compared to a 30% share for offline web-influenced sales.
While more purchases might be driven by online connections and the popularity of browsing on the internet, brick-and-mortar stores may actually gain importance in the final stages of a sale.
Not only will market share increase for web-influenced offline sales, but revenue is projected to grow, too.
Forrester Research reports that such revenue came to $1.2 trillion in Asia-Pacific in 2015; that figure is set to rise to a whopping $2.1 trillion in 2020. So digital may have the buzz, but it would be a mistake to assume that offline buying is about to fade, or that brick-and-mortar stores will soon go the way of the dodo bird.
eMarketer estimates that retail ecommerce sales make up a larger share of total retail sales in Asia-Pacific than they do anywhere else in the world, at 12.1% this year. In Western Europe and North America, the figure hovers just above 8%.
eMarketer estimates that this share is largest in China, where 18.4% of retail sales this year will be transacted via digital channels. Within Asia-Pacific, South Korea comes in second by this metric, followed by New Zealand.
