Less than 2% of purchases happens online. 98%, offline | Hacker News Reader

Less than 2% of purchases happens online. 98%, offline

milo.com

25 pointsrokhayakebe13 comments

I don't understand where the data for this graph came from. The 2000 Census?

It claims online electronics sales of $1.3 billion. But Newegg alone sold $1.3 billion... in 2005. http://www.allbusiness.com/business-planning-structures/star...

The numbers just aren't believable.

These numbers feel more realistic:

http://www.permuto.com/blog/2010/02/27/what-are-people-reall...

Maybe I'm interpreting the Milo graph wrong.

This also doesn't make sense. 57.9% of "food, beer and wine" are bought online? doesn't seem right.

EDIT: a quick google search shows the forrester says that online sales are 6% of retail sales(2009). http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/us-retail-sale-wi...

The graphs represent completely different data and it is easy to misinterpret. Neither graph represents total percentage of online sales to Brick & Mortar stores accurately.

From the comments on Permuto site: "The graph above is more descriptive of how e-commerce is replacing mail order catalogs for non-store purchases."

Source of data is probably: Table 1022: Electronics Shopping and Mail-Order Houses–Total and E-Commerce Sales. "Represents NAICS code 454110, which comprises establishments primarily engaged in retailing all types of merchandise using non store means, such as catalogs, toll free telephone numbers, or electronic media, such as interactive television or computer. ”

The data is correct (for 2007), but misleading. It represents the % of online sales for companies that have retail stores.

The categories exclude sales from nonstore retailers. So for Hobbies (includes books), the percentage of retails stores revenue that sold online was 1.9%, however online retailers accounted for 20% of total book sales (in 2007)

The source of the data: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s1021.p...

As of 4th Q 2009, 4.3% of retail sales are online: http://www.census.gov/retail/mrts/www/data/html/09Q4.html

Forrester predicts online sales will account 6% of total US retail sales in 2009 and 2010, 7% in 2011 and 8% in 2012 and 2013. http://www.dmnews.com/e-commerce-is-flat-as-a-percentage-of-...

In 2007 20% of book purchases online http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/407236-Chains_Intern...

Too bad this graph was made with no regard to the actual numbers. Compare Food & Beverage to Clothing & Accessories. Food has 0.2% ($1,022) online, while clothing has 0.9 ($2,115). So twice as much in dollars, and four times as much as a percentage. Yet it's shorter and narrower.

It's a disinfographic.

And where are books? Copy says "less than 5% of retail sales" is online, and graphic shows sectors all at 2% or under. What sectors bring the split back up to 5%?

The percentages are of online sales vs offline sales for that category, not of the whole.

Is this Ted Dziuba's startup? I just tried a search in my area and it only came up with 1 item. It doesn't seem very useful so far.

Yes it is

Cars, food, clothing, electronics, misc(???), hobbies(???), and furniture. Let's see, that amounts to duh, duh, duh, duh, huh?, huh?, and duh.

Hmmmmm. Let's see. Something is missing here. I can't quite pin it down. What is it? Oh right! Music, books and movies!

Convenient to just have blinders on to Amazon, iTunes, NetFlix and the like.

Oh, this chart must be before 1990. Aha.

0.2% for food & beverages! Looks like plenty of room there for startups, e.g. OpenTable-like service but for meal takeaways and orders (as opposed to OpenTable's eating out)

"Online sales poised to grow by a factor of 50x!!!"

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