E-Commerce Sales Projected To Grow 14 Percent

Retail sales in the U.S. will increase about 4 percent in 2015 to nearly $5 trillion, according to eMarketer research, while e-commerce is expected to see a 14 percent jump.

According to figures reported by Chain Store Age, that 14 percent increase puts U.S. e-commerce sales at $350 billion, up from last year’s $305.7 billion. Despite the steady growth, e-commerce still isn’t making a large dent in overall retail sales, making up just 7 percent of total sales, according to the data.

Overall, 2014’s holiday season brought out a 16 percent e-commerce retail sale increase, hitting $72 billion; total retail sales for the two-month period grew 3.5 percent to just above $850 billion. Still, this was below what eMarketer projected for the 2014 season. It’s too early to project 2015’s holiday season, but eMarketer is estimating that retail sales in the U.S. will top $4.8 trillion for the year.

“Retail e-commerce sales growth in November and December accelerated more than in each of the past three years, and e-commerce continues to take a larger and larger share of retail sales during the holiday season,” said Yory Wurmser, retail and e-commerce analyst at EMarketer. “Consumers’ increase in comfort in shopping online, and in particular shopping on mobile, led to an extraordinary holiday shopping season on digital channels and created a headwind for strong e-commerce growth overall in 2015.”

EMarketer reported that retail sales hit $22 trillion globally in 2014 and are anticipated to hit $23.9 trillion in 2015, which is a 6 percent, year-over-year increase.