As powerful as the Internet can be, marketers and market researchers need to remember that consumer e-commerce activity is only a tiny fraction of total retail activity in the United States, still in single digits.
On the other hand, e-commerce on the b2b (business-to-business) side is booming, with some 35% of activity in the manufacturing sector conducted online (as of 2007). Note that this is close to double the percentage of just five years prior (18%).
In spite of the hoopla of the Internet, and all the spin, e-commerce retail sales are were only 3.2% of total retail sales in 2007.
Is this going to change? Absolutely. At some point, a critical mass will catapult a much higher percentage of consumer retail sales online. But how soon and by how much? We don’t know.
Until there is clarity in this regard, marketers, and market researchers, must continue to look at the entire market, the majority of which are not e-commerce users, yet.
As marketers and market researchers, we are all connected. We have to be. As is virtually all of corporate America. But just because we are, does not mean that everyone is (the connectivity rate among households remains stubbornly at around 75%) nor does it mean that the Internet is the center of connected consumers’ lives. It isn’t.
Want proof? Just look at the e-commerce retail numbers above.
Sure, the Internet is the Wild West. Lots of folks, especially marketers, are getting rich quick, seemingly popping up websites and selling hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars worth of stuff.
But right now, the circus is in town. And the bright lights and cotton candy and carnival barkers are enticing and distracting.
As marketers, we must have the sobriety to view the world, and the markets, not through our own lenses, but through those of the customers and markets we serve. That is what we do as market researchers. Report back to the insular corporation the realities facing the customers and markets outside.
It’s a job I relish.
Comments welcome.
Dr. Bob
