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An analyst has claimed that the retail market looks bleak in Australia because of their lack of ecommerce, he also said that the eCommerce industry is being hampered by “second rate” couriers.
Laurence Wade of GLC Research said that ecommerce logistics is dismal – courtesy of second-rate courier companies. But this will change as greater volumes of goods are shipped to consumers rather than purchased in stores.
In a new research report he said that the traditional retailer landscape is looking ever more threatened as the tendrils of the Internet percolate through society. More ‘smart’ money is being invested in pure ecommerce plays, whilst main street retailers are mostly responding poorly to the challenges (and opportunities) of ecommerce. Our research is not yet showing strong direct causality, but we believe online shopping is impacting Harvey Norman, JB Hi-Fi, David Jones and Myer, to name but four big retailers. At best, their ecommerce websites are either non-existent or far from best practice.
He said “We expect ecommerce penetration to achieve levels already seen in the US in fairly short order, which will impact negatively on revenues and earnings, and accelerating price discovery will compound earnings reductions. At the same time, any big retailer could be developing and implementing successful”.
He added “ecommerce sites that do not, or barely, cannibalise their physical stores. It is not as if the means to do this is rocket science. Our sense is that retailers will upgrade their websites gradually as a defensive strategy, but we think this misses a big opportunity. Major shopping centre owners will also feel increasing pressure as customers choose
to shop from home or their mobile devices”.
