About Forrester
Forrester Research, Inc. is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology.

Sucharita serves eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals. She is a leading expert on eCommerce, multichannel retail, consumer behavior, and trends in the online shopping space. She is also a noted authority on technology developments that affect the online commerce industry and vendors that facilitate online marketing and merchandising.
In her research, Sucharita covers such consumer-oriented topics as eCommerce forecasting and trends, merchandising best practices, conversion optimization, and social computing in the retail world. She has also authored "The State Of Retailing Online," a joint study conducted annually with Shop.org and a leading industry benchmark publication.
Prior to Forrester, Sucharita was the director of marketing at Saks Fifth Avenue, where she managed the customer acquisition, retention, and market research efforts for the $2 billion luxury retailer's online channel. Prior to Saks, she held management positions at Toys R Us, where she was a merchant in the Babies R Us division and a store manager in one of the company's largest toy stores. She also worked for the Walt Disney Company, where she developed and managed marketing plans for new business initiatives, including the Disney Stores, the Disney Cruise Line, and Club Disney.
Additionally, she was involved in the expansion of Cap Cities/ABC properties, specifically ESPN Zone, ESPN Magazine, and the Go.com network. She has written two nonfiction books and has contributed to BusinessWeek Online.
Sucharita holds a B.A. in economics from Harvard University and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
We have just finalized our projections for US eCommerce for 2013 and not surprisingly, the numbers are strong — excluding auctions, we expect that figure to be $262B, 13% higher than the total...
In a recent blog post of mine, I mentioned that Forrester had launched the Retail eCommerce Playbook. This playbook provides a structured framework to guide eBusiness professionals through their most...
You may have noticed that over the last several months, Forrester analysts have been writing “playbooks,” which are holistic overviews of various aspects of our respective coverage areas....
The rapid growth and ubiquity of smartphones has led many to conclude that a significant portion of Internet activity, including shopping, will migrate to these mobile devices. To help eBusiness...
Forrester recently completed the “State Of Retailing Online 2013: Key Metrics And Initiatives” report in conjunction with our friends at Shop.org. It is available on Shop.org (with a...
It’s no longer a question of whether or not consumers will adopt mobile as an interaction and transaction channel this holiday shopping season. Over the last year, mobile has proven itself to...
In two recent instances in public forums, I’ve heard eBusiness executives talking about some rather disturbing uses of personal data. One was the CTO of a large big-box retailer who raised the...
As mobile Internet use has grown, so has the usage of smartphones in stores. Much of that in-store phone usage is innocuous — using store maps, for instance — but some of it is...
Forrester’s “US Online Holiday Retail Sales Forecast, 2012” launches today; in it, we predict that this November and December alone are expected to pull in $68.4 billion...
The 2012 Shop.org Annual Summit, the prestigious eCommerce confab, was held this past week in Denver. I got the chance to emcee the event and meet the keynote speakers. And the lineup was...
Last week, my colleague Brian Walker and I released a lengthy overview of Amazon, its role in retail, and what eBusiness executives need to do to compete with this growing retail force. The...
Consumers are now in control, especially when it comes time to buy. Ubiquitous connectivity allows consumers to easily check prices and buy on the go, which should worry (not terrify) traditional...
Until a few months ago Bank of America won the “Best In Biting The Hand That Feeds You” Award when it initiated its $5 debit card fee increase. Citibank may have trumped that in...
eCommerce sales continue to grow rapidly, having topped $200 billion in 2011. As web shopping has been on an upward trajectory for over a decade now, these figures should shock few. We...
Nearly 50% of web shoppers start their research process on Amazon or Google. Over 40% of the world’s Internet traffic constitutes daily visits to Facebook and Google. Twenty-one percent...
I was called a Facebook hater last week. No ambiguity. "You're such a hater!" this woman, who happened to be a social media marketer at a large retailer, told me. I will...
I received a curious email from one of the founders of eBags the other day. In it, he said that by bringing customer service back to the US and away from an offshore vendor, the company actually...
As the Facebook IPO nears, all eyes are on the valuation the company will command. The vast majority of that valuation will come from the company’s digital advertising...
Ron Johnson, the new CEO of JCPenney, had a dog-and-pony show in New York this morning to discuss the company’s go-forward strategy. The major change: fewer sales and a move toward an...
As the online holiday shopping season comes to a close, we’re in the process of pulling together our final thoughts on this season. Last month, we predicted that the season would grow 15%...
As the debate around mandating an online sales tax rages on, Forrester remains convinced that 2012 will see no significant national change to the current tax structure. As stated in my new...