Digital channels such as marketplaces is set to contribute €1 trillion worth of sales to European retail sales by 2021 – with Amazon exerting a particularly widespread influence across the whole customer journey, new research suggests.
According to the Forrester report, Digital-Influenced Retail Sales Forecast, 2017 to 2022, 55% of sales in the leading seven European markets – which include the UK – will either take place online or be influenced by online channels from social to mobile to marketplaces.
The study says that some 45% of offline retail sales, worth €768 billion, will be influenced by digital channels by 2022. It goes on to suggests that digital influenced sales will grow by a compound annual growth rate of 7.5% between 2017 and 2022.
“Nearly 75% of adults in the seven markets shop online and use the internet to find an research products. Online is steadily increasing in importance. We forecast that 55% of all EU-7 retail sales in 2022 will either take place online or be digitally influenced offline sales – and they will surpass more than €1 trillion in sales in 2021.”
– Satish Meena, report author, Forrester
Smartphones, tablets, marketplaces and online advertising are, says the report, all key drivers of digital’s increasing influence in retail sales. Smartphones and tablets alone are expected to influence retail sales worth €620 billion by 2022, up from €306 billion in 2017.
The report says that Amazon’s role as an influencer and leading source of information at each stage of the customer journey will develop in coming years as its position in voice commerce develops. It also sees a growing role for marketplaces influencing offline sales.
“Amazon plans to take advantage of this strength and build its own search advertising business, and retailers will increasingly allocate advertising dollars to Amazon.”
– Satish Meena, report author, Forrester
One Response
With advertising Amazon knows what a person buys as well as searches where as Google and Facebook do not know what a person buys, that is the difference between google, Facebook and Amazon. Which means as an advertising platform Amazon is more valuable than Facebook and Google and as the years tick by it can be expected that Amazons advertising revenue will have exponential growth. Amazon must know this as they have been allocating a lot of resources to its advertising business.