Why Leave The House When You Can Shop Online ...

The holidays are almost here! Time's running out to get your gifts in time. 

Luckily, it's never been easier to get stuff. On top of online shopping, Amazon has stewarded the switch to almost instantaneous shipping. 

I remember when malls were filled to the brim, and Black Friday led to stampedes and people dying. Now, it's brick-and-mortar stores that are dying.

Not only are the in-store deals not as good, but the best deals are online. Here's a chart showing the surge of online shopping.

 

via visualcapitalist

Online shopping now accounts for about 15% of consumer spending, up from 4.1% in 2010. 

In addition, Q4 always sees a massive spike, with online spending accounting for 17.1% of consumer spending in 2023. 

This year, Cyber Monday attracted over 64 million U.S. shoppers, three times the number who shopped in stores. 

You can find change everywhere, but one place to look hasn't changed. Amazon is all about infrastructure and disruption. 

• Amazon announced Rufus, a new generative AI-powered conversational shopping experience.
• Amazon announced a way to get your prescriptions online faster and cheaper than a traditional pharmacy.
• Now, you can even buy cars on Amazon.

It's interesting to consider how drastically this changes supply chain management. People now expect free and fast shipping and the ability to return items if they don't work out (instead of trying them in-store). Meanwhile, brands have high fixed costs due to their existing retail locations, yet they need to keep most of their stock in warehouses instead of their box stores to deal with the surplus of online orders. 

We're already seeing the failure of malls and the bust of commercial real estate. If this trend continues of work-from-home and online shopping, we could see a $250 billion decrease in commercial property value by 2026.  

What do you think it would take to stop the bleeding and encourage both consumers and employees to leave their homes?