Online commerce is the future, from international businesses shipping batches of tech out from their warehouses worldwide to one-man top electronics stores shipping gadgets from a humble garage.
A report by Forrester Investigation announced in December 2011 showed that business-to-consumer sales in the US hit a whopping 142.5 billion USD, which is about 8 % of country's retail sales. The research business estimates that online B2C sales will hit 279 billion USD by 2015. The problem is that they underestimated the development of ecommerce. eMarketer has announced information showing that online retail sales have already hit 225.5 billion USD in 2012 alone and expects the figure to hit 338.9 billion USD in 2015.
The UK on the other hand saw online retail sales increase to far more than 50 billion GBP or nearly 76 billion USD. What's more critical, however, is that these online sales account for 12 percent of the UK's total retails, making the United Kingdom the ecommerce hub of the world in terms of per capita spending. Germany and France are not far behind with online sales accounting for 10 and 8.7 percent for their respective total retails.
This information is a huge point for online best electronics stores and electronics purchasers alike.
Let's start with electronics suppliers such as myself. We sellers have to prepare ourselves for increasing demand as online purchasing becomes more and more typical. We have to make sure our stocks are properly managed to deal with the inevitable improvement in sales without over-committing. The last point gadget suppliers want to do is turn into burdened with hundreds of tablet pcs or headsets that turn into obsolete in a year or two.
Internet electronics stores also have to prepare for the inevitability of government taxation. The US is already eyeing an Internet sales tax which will place the burden of sales tax away from customers and unto sellers. Online retailers should then find out how to compensate for these taxes by either reducing operating charges and danger inefficiency or enhance prices and danger losing buyers.
The average user, though, can expect only very good items in the long term. Positively, an Internet sales tax could raise the prices of online items, but the sheer competitiveness of online retail will always work to the benefit of the consumer. This cannot be truer for gadget shops. Those of us operating online electronics stores always attempt to outdo every single other, reducing prices and offering the best customer service we can in order to entice shoppers to buy electronics online from us.
It is also quite easy for the consumer to evaluate prices and services with a handful of mouse clicks. A basic Google search will generate a list of value comparisons while complete blogs and websites dedicate themselves to comparing and reviewing goodies. All these items makes it so easy for customers to buy gadgets over the internet at the best feasible prices - specially with the advent of mobile purchasing thanks to smartphones and tablet computers.
To cut a long story quickly, the average consumer and specialized electronics stores will benefit from the inevitable shift from offline retail to online retail. We just want to prepare ourselves for the shift so we get a heads up on the rest of the contest!