>September 26, 2000
Conventional wisdom has it that traditional brick-and-mortar stores are fading fast under the dot-com onslaught, like so many deleted computer files.
But even among young, tech-savvy consumers, Main Street is hardly about to crash, an expert on e-commerce assured several hundred anxious retailers yesterday at the National Retail Federation's conference on Internet business at the San Diego Convention Center.
"In fact, the demise of many dot-com (companies) has reopened opportunities" for traditional retailers to use the Internet and other new technologies to their advantage, said Mary Modahl, executive vice president of Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research.
The four-day conference, which continues through Wednesday and is not open to the public, is designed to give national retailers exposure to computer-technology firms and consultants with an eye toward integrating the Internet and other electronic channels into their sales attack.
"There is incredible interest in the subject of e-commerce among our members right now," said Retail Federation spokeswoman Pamela Rucker, noting that the trade group recently formed a 45-member council on information technology to study strategies to help its members become more competitive.
The 35 million consumers who regularly shop online bought $45 billion in merchandise in the last year. That's up from $8 billion in sales just two years ago.
But traditional businesses that offer so-called multichannel shopping -- brick-and-mortar store, catalog and Web site -- are nevertheless posting higher sales than less-ambitious competitors, Modahl said.
Indeed, a federation survey of leading national retailers released yesterday to coincide with Modahl's address indicates that the Internet can be a tool for bolstering store traffic.
The survey found that 34 percent of shoppers end up looking for or purchasing items in stores that they originally saw on retailers' Web pages, while 27 percent of customers look for or buy products online that they originally spotted at the mall. And 51 percent who received retailers' catalogs used the books to buy things online.
Modahl cited Kmart's Web site, Blue Light, and J.C. Penney Co.'s Internet address as unlikely success stories in multichannel retailing.
"Kmart signed up 4.5 million consumers within nine months," she said, noting that the value-oriented Web sites have drawn in mainstream customers who typically have shied away from using the Internet as a shopping medium.
J.C. Penney has likewise discovered that Internet surfers spend considerably more money in the company's stores than consumers who don't browse online.
"If customers only go to J.C. Penney's Web site, they spend $120 a year," Modahl said. "But if they go to the Web site and use the company catalog, they spend $500. And if they also patronize the (J.C. Penney) retail store, they spend $1,000." |
