Online retail >$10 trillion by 2020

The digital economy delivers. It lowers costs and barriers to markets, as well as providing access to an unprecedented number of customers (both business and consumer). The traditional routes to markets have eroded. Smart companies, notably web savvy businesses, have created and leveraged technologies to grow their online global sales, brands and businesses.

In any given “home market” there is a truism that the vast majority of your potential clients are located in, by definition, outside in those global markets. Sow the two together, online and global, and you have the driver that ensures B2B and B2C online global retail will represent >$10 trillion of transactions by 2020. And the #1 beneficiaries of the digital economy are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). If you are a decision maker in an SME, please do read on, think through the sales opportunities and the potential value to your brand and business.

The recent Frost & Sullivan (a consultancy) report entitled “Future of B2B Online Retailing” informs us that “B2B online retail is projected to grow to $6.7 trillion by 2020 due to the rapid migration of manufacturers and wholesalers from legacy systems to open, online platforms. The market is expected to double the B2C online market size and witness much higher transaction volumes”. So for B2C, that would be >$3.2 trillion by 2020. The direct impact this has on costs, barriers, markets and customers is already understood, and from which we can extrapolate tomorrow’s online retail markets for SMEs.

A full version of this article originally appeared on our ibt.onl website.

John is a founding partner at IBT Online at its creation in 2002. John started his professional career in London qualifying as a Chartered Accountant. Today, he is an acknowledged expert in the field of innovating international business development, with global website localization and international online marketing.