More and more American consumers are participating in online shopping

Absrtact: August 6, foreign media published an analysis of the Tuesday article said that the U.S. consumer is increasingly involved in online shopping. The decline in physical retail outlets is forcing retailers to shrink their plans to open new stores. The following is a summary of the content of the article:

U.S. consumers are increasingly involved in online shopping, according to an analysis published by foreign media in Tuesday August 6. The decline in physical retail outlets is forcing retailers to shrink their plans to open new stores. The following is a summary of the article content:

As consumers are increasingly involved in online shopping, US retailers are facing a steep and enduring decline in retail traffic, forcing physical retailers to consider selling or reducing the number of new stores.

According to ShopperTrak, a market research firm that tracks passenger flow data from major retail outlets, excluding a small rebound in April this year, physical retail outlets have fallen by 5% or more per cent a month over the past two years. Even as the weather began to warm, U.S. physical retail outlets were down nearly 7% in June and fell by nearly 5% in July, according to ShopperTrak data.

New data from Moody's show that consumers ' shopping habits are starting to shift to online shopping, which has prompted retailers to cut back on the number of new outlets and may lead them to continue to slash the number of new outlets in the next few years. Moody's statistics also show that revenue growth in the US's 100 largest retail outlets has slipped from more than 12% per cent to less than 3% in today's three years ago.

Changes in consumer preferences are bringing pressure on retailers. They no longer in the major stores, with a momentary impulse to shop, consumers more and more use of mobile phones and computers than the price of products, select Promotions, the strict review of shopping lists. Even retailers that offer discounted services find it hard to use low prices to spur lower-income consumers ' desire to buy.

Walgreen, America's largest chain-store operator, said in Tuesday that passenger traffic in the Walgreen sector in its retail outlets had fallen by 2.6% in July this year. CVS CVS Corp., the country's second-largest pharmacy operator, said the drop in passenger traffic, excluding newly opened and closed stores, led to a 0.4% drop in sales in the second quarter. CVS also said the decision to stop selling cigarettes partly led to a decrease in the volume of traffic in the company's retail outlets.

"Consumers are still quite cautious," said Helena Foulkes, president of CVS Pharmacy Helena Fox. She also said that rivals have launched more aggressive promotional campaigns this year.

US retail giant Target warned investors in Tuesday that the financial data for target could be lower than expected in the second quarter because the promotional campaign failed to bring enough consumers back to the company's retail stores. Target's passenger traffic has been slipping after 6 consecutive quarters of falling passenger traffic and from last year's credit card data leak.

According to target, the U.S. Department's sales were basically flat in the second quarter, while EBITDA (ie, earnings without interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) would be lower than expected, largely because of spending on promotional activities, and sales in Canada would be somewhat weaker than expected, Continued investment to clean up excess inventories has had an impact on its performance. Earlier this year, Target expelled chief executive Gregg Stanhafi Gregg Steinhafel and appointed a Pepsi executive, Blaine Caunell Brian Cornell, who worked at Target rival Wal-Mart, to take over his job, Awarded it a 19.3 million dollar equity bonus. Conor will take up his official assignment next week.

John Mulligan, chief financial officer and interim chief executive of Target, said: "While the environment in the US and Canada continues to be challenging and results have failed to reach the desired level, we are pushing up US passenger and sales John Murigan, Efforts to improve Canada's operations and to promote target data transformation are progressing. ”

The flow of retail traffic across the US is now slipping. Last month, accessibility Dollar stores, a discount retailer, said sales fell by 1.8% in the previous quarter as of May 31 as a result of falling passenger traffic.

A drop in the passenger flow of a dollar store and a chain of pharmacies is particularly worrying for the entire industry, as business giants like Wal-Mart have started to boost passenger traffic by launching small retail outlets as passenger traffic declines.

Although passenger traffic has slipped, the overall retail sales of the United States have grown modestly every month since January this year, as employment growth and consumer confidence rose. Sales of store-chain stores in the good city are still growing, while Dollar Tree and Wal-Mart are planning to add hundreds of smaller retail outlets in the next few years.

Online sales now account for more than 6% per cent of the total U.S. retail trade, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Over the past two years, internet sales have risen by more than 15% per cent year-on-year, and are increasingly affecting physical stores.

The Securities and Exchange Commission previously asked best Buy to list the company's online sales figures separately. In Tuesday, Best Buy said the company allowed consumers to buy goods online and pick goods in physical stores, making it harder for companies to differentiate between online purchases and physical store purchases. In the last quarter ended May 3, Best Buy's online sales accounted for 8.2% of total sales, up from 6.3% a year earlier.

Earlier this year, Staples chief executive Ronald Sackint, Ronald Sargent, told investors that since nearly half of the company's sales were from online sales, the company plans to close hundreds of stores in the next two years. "We didn't make this decision hastily," he said. For the long-term sake of our business, we know that this is the right decision. ”

Over the past three years, Sears has closed more than 12% retail outlets and will close another 80 stores this year. RadioShack plans to close 200 retail outlets this year. (Mowgli)