Forrester Research Web-Influenced Retail Sales Forecast, 2015 To 2020 (US)

Web influence is the degree to which the Internet influences offline retail sales. This forecast highlights the effects of retailers’ cross-channel selling efforts. By 2020, we expect 42% of in-store sales to be influenced by the Internet during the customer’s purchase journey. From 2015 to 2020, web-influenced sales will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6%. This forecast calculates web-influenced sales across 31 retail categories, with historical data going back to 2004. The day when almost all products reach 100% web-influenced is rapidly approaching. Therefore, online presence is vital to retailer success, especially when web-influenced sales are more than three times larger than online sales. A new addition to this year’s estimates is a top-line forecast on mobile-phone-influenced sales, which is the percentage of offline retail that is influenced by mobile phone research.