The US Commerce Department created an estimate to value ecommerce to be about 5.8% of Q2 retail sales. The US retail economy was worth approximately $4.4 trillion in 2012. Local services is worth an additional $2.9 trillion (Bureau of Labor Statistics). In store and offline spending in the US is about $7.3 trillion total.
Consumers do online research before buying, and this trend is only increasing each year, especially with the advent of mobile Internet browsing. It is estimated by the e-Tailing Group that half of web-enabled buyers in the US use the web to research about 50% of their purchases (2012: The Connected Consumer 2012 – Evolving Buying Patterns).
Oracle, using consumer surveys, finds that “43% of all U.S. retail sales are influenced by the Web.” The Oracle and Forrester findings would identify web-influenced purchases would be valued around $1.89 trillion.
Factors that may even accelerate the growth of the web's influence on offline retail shopping would be the use of social media sharing on mobile devices. For example, Pinterest is a powerful social-sharing application that many consumers use to connect and inspire. At Ironpaper, we see large gains with many clients on the use of social sharing applications and mobile-connectivity.
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