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Retail

E-Commerce’s Little Miracle

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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While nearly every brick-and-mortar retailer in the country was fighting record drops in same-store sales, e-commerce held its own in the first quarter. Some categories actually showed sharp increases in activity lead by sports and fitness, video games, and computer sofware.

comScore also reported that in the first quarter a year ago e-commerce revenue rose 11%. In the same quarter in 2007, the increase was 17%.

Why did e-commerce outperform sales in physical stores? The easy answer is that online shopping has been growing faster for years. In a recession, that reason may not be adequate, or accurate.

One likely explanation is the comparison shopping for price is easier online. Another is the, in many cases, shipping is free while driving from store-to-store is not

It says a great deal about the economy when “flat” performance is considered good.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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