Fueled by the unbridled adoption of smartphones and tablets among U.S. consumers, eCommerce sales are on pace to grow at a significant annual rate through 2017.
Forrester’s new “U.S. Online Retail Forecast, 2012 To 2017” report indicates that mobile will be critical to the ongoing eCommerce boom in the United States.
“Mobile’s effect is largely to influence sales in other channels,” Sucharita Mulpuru, a principal analyst at Forrester Research, tells Mobile Commerce Daily. “Conversions are small and likely will be small for most sites into the foreseeable future.”
Forrester is projecting $370 billion in U.S. eCommerce sales by 2017, which will represent 10 percent of all retail sales.
In addition to the growth in the next five years, Forrester predicts for eCommerce to contribute to $262 billion in 2013 in the U.S. This represents a 13.4 percent year-over-year growth from $231 billion last year.
Forrester indicates that 400,000 Americans are now employed by eCommerce companies. By 2017, that number is expected to exceed 500,000.
