A new report has just been released from the US Department of Commerce, which looks at retail sales over the course of 2016. In summary, the report found that eCommerce sales reached nearly $400 billion, which is a growth of 15.6% year over year. eCommerce now accounts for 11.7% of the total retail sales in the US. These numbers are excluding fuel and car sales, restaurant, and bar sales though, which at this point couldn’t really be sold online anyway.
Impressively, Amazon drove 65.9% of all the US eCommerce growth last year.
This pushed them up to being responsible for 27.4% of all the eCommerce sales in the country. As they continue to roll out new and innovative ways for people to purchase online, it is expected that their dominance in the eCommerce market will continue for now.
Other companies, notably Walmart, however, are starting to make larger pushes into the eCommerce market, which should drive higher levels of competition. The worry for many is that the refocusing of large retailers is going to slowly push out the small businesses that operate online. For now, however, there definitely seems to be plenty of room for everyone to be making money through the rapidly growing eCommerce market.
