E-Commerce To Cross $200 Billion Threshold This Year

It’s all but certain that when the smoke clears after Q4 holiday shopping in the US, ecommerce will have crossed the $200 billion threshold for the first time. That’s based on extrapolating from data released today by comScore.

The firm reported that ecommerce in the third quarter was $47.5 billion. That’s up 13 percent vs. Q3 2012. We can probably expect fourth quarter ecommerce spending to be more than $60 billion, which would easily lift the full-year 2013 total to more than $200 billion.

These are impressive figures and the market shows robust growth. However a much bigger and but neglected story is internet-influenced offline spending. Depending on how you define it (to include just products or products and services) online-to-offline shopping is worth well over $1 trillion.

Overall ecommerce is a little less than 6 percent of total US retail spending according to the US Commerce Department. That figure may inch up a bit after Q4, however.

Estimated Quarterly U.S. Retail Sales: Total and Ecommerce

Source: US Census Bureau/Commerce Dept (Q2 2013)