E-Commerce will make up 17% of all US retail sales by 2022 – and one company is the main reason (AMZN)

Forrester predicts that online sales will account for 17% of all US retail sales by 2022, up from a projected 12.7% in 2017, according to Forrester’s newOnline Retail Forecastascitedby Digital Commerce 360. The report also expects US online sales to grow 13% YoY in 2017, which is five times faster than projected offline sales growth, and in line with the National Retail Federation’sestimates.

Unsurprisingly, Amazon is expected to be a major driver of this online sales growth. The report states that 83% of US online adults bought something on Amazon in 2016, and 55% of them used Amazon as a research tool before making a purchase.

This suggests the company is so heavily entrenched in product discovery and the purchase process as a whole that, as Amazon itself grows and improves, so do e-commerce sales. As Amazon fleshes out its product discovery offerings with features like Spark, it could further strengthen its power over more e-commerce sales, which is frightening for competitors already struggling to survive against the e-commerce titan.

Brick-and-mortar retailers are caught on the wrong side of the digital shift in retail, with many stuck in a dangerous cycle of falling foot traffic, declining comparable-store sales, and increasing store closures. Over 8,600 retail stores could close this year in the US — more than the previous two years combined, brokerage firm Credit Suisse said in a recent report. Meanwhile, e-commerce pureplays are riding the rise of digital commerce to success — none more so than Amazon, which accounted for 53% of online sales growth in the US last year, according to Slice Intelligence.

In response, many brick-and-mortar retailers have started to use omnichannel fulfillment methods that leverage their store locations and in-store inventory in order to better compete in e-commerce. These omnichannel services, including ship-from-store and click-and-collect, can help retailers manage the transition to digital by:

However, few retailers have mastered these new fulfillment services. While these companies have spent years optimizing their supply chain and logistics networks for delivering goods to their stores or directly to customers’ doorsteps, most have yet to figure out how to profitably bring their store locations into the e-commerce delivery process.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report: