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

Vikram leads the forecast team, which is responsible for producing all forecasts within M&S research. He is focused on the consumer commerce areas including retail, travel, and financial services. He is keenly involved in understanding the evolution of consumers' online behavior and technology adoption.
Vikram came to Forrester Research through its acquisition of Jupiter Research, where he started in July 2000. Prior to Jupiter, Vikram worked at IRI, a leading market research company, where he worked closely with some of the leading CPG companies.
Vikram often appears on TV, radio, and comments in the press on the US online retail and travel industry. He has been quoted in The L.A. Times, Business Week, The New York Times, CNN Money, and American Banker. He has also appeared on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and Radio, NPR, Fox Business News, and ABC.
Vikram earned an M.B.A. from Virginia Tech and a B.Com from N.M College in Mumbai, India.
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...
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...

As Amazon.com has grown aggressively in recent years, expanded into diverse businesses, and achieved profitability, its impact on the eBusiness and retail sectors is now top of mind. For many...

A Rice University faculty member just published a study on how effective merchants find Groupon. To Groupon critics, it was honey because a whooping 40% of participants wouldn’t repeat the...
As the election year approaches, we can bet that the cries to impose tax on online retailers will get even more pronounced as politicians look for ways to close our budget deficit and make...
eCommerce Tops $200 Billion In 2011
eCommerce sales continue to grow rapidly, having topped $200 billion in 2011. Forrester expects that online sales will grow from 7% of overall retail sales to close to 9% by 2016. Key drivers of this...

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...
Forrester recently published the “State Of Retailing Online 2011: Marketing, Social, and Mobile” report in conjunction with our friends at Shop.org. It is available on Shop.org (with a...
Benchmarks: The Retail eCommerce Playbook
This is the second of two reports that detail the findings from "The State Of Retailing Online, 2011," a Shop.org research survey conducted by Forrester Research. Specific topics covered in this...

Demystifying The Hype For Retail eBusiness Executives
In spite of the fact that hundreds of millions of people around the world have Facebook accounts, the ability of the social network to drive revenue for eCommerce businesses continues to remain...

I was so glad to read Malcolm Gladwell’s piece in the New Yorker, because as a Facebook bear, I often feel alone in the wilderness. Finally, I thought, a widely respected contrarian on...
As US online retail continues to grow and capture shopper wallet share, online retail executives must determine the best areas on which to focus their limited resources, particularly given the number...

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...
In my ongoing-yet-fruitless quest to find the great social commerce success story, I’ll talk to anyone who will talk to me about the topic. I talked this week to a "venture...
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...
Ownership of tablet devices is poised for rapid growth with tablet users in the US estimated to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 51% from 2010 to 2015. Already a significant percent of...
Forrester expects US holiday season online retail sales to grow 15% year over year. While the possibility of a double-dip recession remains, consumers are continuing to increase their use of the Web...
Mobile Growth To Amplify Web Pre-Shopping More Than Ever
As consumers are more likely to own mobile devices and spend more of their time online than ever before, they are also likely now than ever to use the Web to support their purchases. By 2016,...

Dear Potential Investor, I have mixed feelings about the Groupon IPO. On one hand, we’ve just come out of a horrible economic period where there was a real fear of wealth destruction. But now...
As eCommerce has exploded, eBusiness executives have often looked to various payment forms at checkout as a means of growing their businesses. Alternative payments, or non-card payments, purport to...
