120 Days of Retail: Day 40 - e-Commerce growth is predicted to edge out in-store purchase growth in 2023

Last month the largest retail trade group in the country, the National Retail Federation or NRF, broadcast its economic forecasts for the industry for the coming year.

The good news is the picture for retail in general is better than it is for the US economy as a whole. The US GDP is expected to grow by about 1% in 2023, whereas retail sales are expected to grow between 4% and 6% this year, which could be as high as $5.23 trillion dollars.

That's certainly cause for celebration for retailers who were no doubt wondering whether the pandemic spending spree among consumers would dry out, especially as the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates.

What stuck out to me about the forecast however was that non-store retail sales are expected to grow at double the in-store rate. Roughly 10% to 12% to a total of as high as $1.43 trillion dollars. What that means is in just a decade or two from now, online e-commerce sales could surpass in-store sales, which would be a rather strange world.

As the NRF forecast noted however, even among the roughly 30% of non-store sales that do take place, many of these are driven by omnichannel participation by retail locations. In other words, it's the online division of a physical retail store that's receiving the sale.

For independent retailers, the best way to compete with these online giants growing at a faster rate than in-store purchases is to create an online presence themselves. On of the best ways to do this is with an instant BOPIS solution like ListIt.

ListIt allows retailers to create an online presence for their store in seconds- even right from your cell phone with the ListIt app- and begin uploading products for local shoppers to Buy Online Pick Up In-Store (BOPIS). Most purchase decisions start online nowadays, so this gives local stores the option to make their inventory known to local shoppers instead of their only option being to ship the product via an online mega-retailer.

Given the potential to fight back against online mega-retailers that BOPIS solutions like ListIt present, the picture for local independent stores may be even rosier in the coming years than some cynics would expect given the recent trends in ecommerce. Now that there's a way to easily compete without needing a development team or even a website, with ListIt retailers can get their local inventory in front of shoppers where those shoppers are looking-online.