For all the talk about Amazon, e-commerce only accounts for about 10% of global retail sales.
Meanwhile, the retail industry is terrified that everything will be purchased online. It explains why retailers still standing - at least for now - are scrambling to create experiences rather than shopping destinations.
But maybe not everything will evolve into e-commerce.
Take grocery shopping, for example. Wal-Mart recently launched online shopping in Canada so we took it for a spin. While it's great to have groceries delivered to your door, it wasn't the perfect experience. The Website is clunky, it is difficult to cherry-pick items on sale and you receive a mountain of plastic bags. In the end, I threw in the towel and went back to the local grocery store.
Maybe bricks and mortar isn't going the way of the dinosaur. As Seth Godin wrote recently, Amazon may have won the "buying race", but the race for shopping, which is fun and makes us feel connected, is far from over.
There is no doubt e-commerce will continue to grow - heck, I just purchased hockey sticks online - but there still room for "real" stores that create reasons for us get up from the computer and leave the house.
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