The battle for the shrinking American budget is moving online this year with a vengeance. While the recession took its toll on shopping centers and strip malls around the country, the economic downturn has left the Internet poised to enter 2010 as a larger force in retail.
Newly frugal shoppers are turning to the Internet in droves to compare prices, hunt for bargains, download coupons and seek advice from fellow shoppers. Retailers, weary from years of building sprees, are diverting capital away from physical storefronts and to their Web sites, investing in the technology to make online shopping easier, faster and cheaper.
Look no further than Wal-Mart Stores Inc. for a sign that online shopping, historically only 5 percent of U.S. retail sales, is about to get a whole lot bigger. The world’s largest retailer announced late last year that it plans to unleash its economic might on its decade-old but often neglected Web site, walmart.com, intent on toppling Amazon.com Inc. from its perch as the world’s largest online merchant.
“There’s no question the Internet has gone from being a curious sidebar to a main event,” said Mark Cohen, marketing professor at Columbia Business School in New York and former chairman and CEO of Sears Canada Inc. “Customers are becoming completely comfortable with doing business on the Net and receiving things in short order. This year is going to be a very good year for online shopping, tempered only by the negative effect of the economy.”
Online sales, excluding travel, had been growing at a roughly 20 percent to 25 percent annual clip for much of the decade, before slowing to a 6 percent gain in 2008, according to ComScore Inc., a digital market research firm.
Growth came to a halt last year. When ComScore releases its year-end data this week, 2009 online sales are…