eCommerce

Today, eCommerce influences more than 56% of in-store purchases, while eCommerce itself represents almost 10% of U.S. retail sales. That figure is growing by nearly 15% annually. eCommerce has gone beyond “buying something on a website” to a series of interactions that rely on technology to move goods.

As these figures suggest, stores can no longer survive without being present on their customers’ preferred channels; retailers need to fully integrate digital commerce in order to thrive. It also allows many private business owners, entrepreneurs, small business, and medium-size companies to compete in the online marketplace landscape.

Amazon, the quintessential and most powerful eCommerce marketplace, is expected to continue its relentless growth. Much like its Chinese counterpart Alibaba, Amazon will be a ubiquitous element in every eCommerce business plan.

Jeff Bezos has long been one of the wealthiest people in the world. Now, the company he founded is also one of the world's most valuable surpassing the market cap of $1 trillion dollars on September 4^th, 2018.

Amazon became the second U.S company to reach the $1 trillion-dollar barrier crossing the milestone when the stock price reached $2,050.27 per share.

Amazon had been racing Apple to become the first U.S. company to reach a $1 trillion market value through most of the year. Apple hit the milestone on August 2nd, 2018 and only five weeks before Amazon. Notably, each company has employed very different strategies and business models to get to this point.

The trillion-dollar benchmark came just 50 days after Amazon set a new record during its own annual sales event, Amazon Prime Day, with over 100 million products sold. That even also pushed Amazon to a market value of $900 billion, at the time.

55% of Americans begin their product searches on Amazon now. Online sales represent nearly half of all eCommerce sales in the U.S. eBay is a distant second at just under 10%. All other purchases online represent approximately 5%.

These figures will continue to grow in 2018-2019 for a number of reasons.

Together, members are influencing the online and eCommerce marketplaces with increased revenue growth.