US Interest in Pure-Play eCommerce Drops 28% in 3 Years

As the early stages of the pandemic become more distant history, consumers are becoming less and less interested in purely digital retail journeys.

By the Numbers

For the report “2024 Global Digital Shopping Index: U.S. Edition,” PYMNTS Intelligence surveyed more than 2,400 United States consumers in late 2023 to understand trends in shoppers’ behavior now and over the past few years.

The results revealed that consumers are going to stores more often. In 2020, 36% of consumers preferred pure-play eCommerce. By late last year, that figure had dropped to 26%.

It is not just because consumers were in lockdown during 2020. Even since 2022, more consumers have been choosing brick-and-mortar shopping venues. The study found that, in 2022, 40% of consumers opted to shop in stores without digital assistance. By late 2023, that had risen to 44%.

The Data in Context

Given consumers’ sustained and even growing interest in brick-and-mortar shopping, retailers are investing in new in-store experiences.

Take, for instance, online furniture company Wayfair, which is getting into physical commerce.

“We’re only launching a couple stores for each of our brands and then iterating to make sure that we really dial it in before we then scale [to] make sure that the unit economics work the way we expect, that the customer loyalty that it engenders and creates, which would be both online, offline works the way that we would expect,” Wayfair CEO, Co-Chairman and Co-founder Niraj Shah said on the company’s most recent earnings call. “We don’t necessarily expect that you get that right out the gate.”

Not only do compelling physical stores drive sales on site — they also boost eCommerce adoption.

“What’s been surprising is … the halo that we’ve seen in that region [of our brick-and-mortar location], just by having the store,” Victor Tam, CEO of direct-to-consumer (D2C) travel and luggage brand Monos, told PYMNTS in an interview. “[In] our tests, in the region of BC, we’re seeing a lift of roughly 40% in eCommerce revenue just by having the store versus other regions that don’t have the store.”

For all PYMNTS retail coverage, subscribe to the daily Retail Newsletter.