Online shopping has come of age, as this chart by Wells Fargo Securities shows. In 2002, Walmart accounted for more than a quarter of the annual growth in American retail sales; Amazon for a mere 5%. But now Amazon’s has surged to 40%.
It seems 2008 and 2009, when overall American retail sales fell, “was the moment when we stopped going to the shops and moved online”, says Fidelity’s Tom Stevenson. The key driver of online retail sales growth has been the advent of the smartphone, he adds.