This has been an unexpected banner year for online
retail sales, mostly attributable to the impacts of business
shutdowns and social-distancing practices on the way Americans shop
in this year of pandemic. Nobody saw it coming or anticipated its
effect on the consumer economy.
Whether or not they wanted to, most Americans became more
frequent online shoppers in 2020. This development has profound
implications for the retail sector, not just in 2020 but for the
decade ahead, as most shoppers won't likely go back to their
old spending ways in a post-COVID world.
Consequently, we have revised our online retail forecast model,
which previously had gains in annual online market share peaking in
2019 and gradually subsiding thereafter. We now expect
online retail sales growth will increase by 25% for the year,
nearly double our previous estimate. Our revised forecast model
expects online retail sales to reach $748 billion in 2020 compared
to $598 billion last year and
