We have herd this prediction before and know that things just got a little ahead of themselves. Some time has passed and many years after the .Com bubble has burst, a new reality has emerged that has been hurried by the resent economic downturn.
It is plain to see if you have been watching what Amazon.com who is king of the hill in record online sales and Wal-Mart have been doing. Wal-Mart had given me some clues that they were indeed worried about the online sale space when they changed their logo to what looks identical to the icon for online data waiting symbol. Latter I see them engaging online sales of video and music as netflix and itunes are now a direct competitor for them and Wal-Marts Share is shrinking.
I have always said that the only competitor I can see in the future to have any force against Wal-Mart is the Internet in general. If I must be forced to buy all this foreign stuff, it is likely I may be buying it directly from a warehouse in the US or China. If Wal-Mart can cut out the middle man… so can I !
Major retailers have the most to loose and the most to gain and the staying power to make a conversion but they may be entering the online market a little late as there are plenty of retailers and marketers that have experience in the game and who knows what new idea will come down that info highway to throw them all a curve because anyone can compete on the web.
The problem gets to be how fair search engines can be to each retailer especially when they may spend a bunch of advertisement dollars within.
But here are some interesting clips to read on the first noticeable major shift from Bricks to Clicks.
Mediapost Publications The Obsolescence Of Brick-and-Mortar Predicting majority shift to clicks in 5 years.