eCommerce Industry Projected to Exceed $485 Billion In Sales by 2021

The United States-based retail ecommerce industry is expected to experience a major increase in sales by the year 2021, Statista data suggests.

The projection expects sales to exceed $485 billion four years from now. The projection aligns with major moves by online retailing platforms like Amazon and Walmart.com, which are raking in billions for bottom line sales every year.

In February of 2017, Business Insider reported that the National Retail Federation (NRF) said that all retail sales are supposed to grow by nearly 4 percent this year. However, the majority of that growth will come from an 8 to 12 percent estimated increase in sales from within the ecommerce industry.

“It is clear that online sales will continue to expand in 2017 and provide growth for the retail industry,” NRF chief economist Jack Kleinhenz said, via the February report. “But it is important to realize that virtually every major retailer sells online and many of those sales will be made by discount stores, department stores, and other traditional retailers. Retailers sell to consumers however they want to buy, whether it’s in-store, online or mobile.”

This growth projection estimate for the ecommerce industry is three times greater than the overall growth in sales for the wider retail industry.

Online and other nonstore sales — including mail order catalogs, direct to customer sales, and telephone sales — totaled $145.49 billion in the fourth quarter of 2016. DigitalCommerce360 pointed out that this was a 12.8 percent increase from fourth quarter sales from online and nonstore sources in 2015.

With these projections, the U.S. Department of Commerce has indicated that sales will continue to increase. In the latest release of retail e-commerce sales–specifically–the first quarter of 2017 saw a total of  $105.7 billion, an increase of 4.1 percent from the fourth quarter of 2016. Retail e-commerce sales in the fourth quarter of 2016 were $101.6 billion.

On a wide scale, e-commerce has become the go-to business strategy for retailers. Given the obvious reach of the internet and the added convenience, sales will increase regardless of projections.

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