There are some things you don’t do online such as buy gasoline or eat out at restaurants. What about the rest?
I created the chart by taking total sales and subtracting things one does not normally buy online.
Gasoline is obvious, so is eating out at restaurants.
Although one can buy groceries online and have them delivered, most do not order much food online. Omaha steaks and Christmas cheese packages don’t add up to much. I subtract groceries from the total.
The same applies to cars. Most do not buy cars online. But I am sure this will change eventually.
Nonstore Retail Sales as Percent of Advance Retail Sales Detail
Progression
- In 1992, about 9 percent of sales were online
- In the next eight years online sales rose to about 12 percent.
- In another eight years ending to the start of the covid recession, online sales were at 15 percent then dipped in the recession.
- In the 10 years starting from 2010 to 2020 online sales zoomed from 15 percent to 26 percent.
- In the last four years online sales jumped over eight percentage points from about 26 percent over 34 percent, ignoring the initial covid spike.
Covid did not change the trend towards online shopping but it certainly accelerated the trend.
Retail Sales Surge 0.6 Percent, Beating Economist’s Expectations
Economists expected a December rise in retail sales of 0.4 percent. Instead, consumers went on a spending spree. But two-thirds of that was due to inflation. Real (inflation-adjusted) sales rose 0.2 percent.
Real retail sales peaked in April of 2022 (yellow highlight).
For more discussion and more charts please see Retail Sales Surge 0.6 Percent, Beating Economist’s Expectations
And how are consumers paying for this? I think you know the answer.
Fueled by Debt
Total consumer credit, revolving credit, and credit card interest rates all hit new record highs in November.
Consumer Credit Hits Record $5 Trillion
To explain the apparent strength in retail sales, please note Consumer Credit Hits Record $5 Trillion, Credit Card Rates Also Record High
Revolving (mostly credit card debt) is at a record high. For discussion, including a calculation of real, inflation-adjusted debt, please click on the above link.
This article is a gem! The information you’ve provided is not only helpful but also presented in an engaging way.
The WEFers are now promoting Disease X, which they claim could be 20X deadlier than Covid. A nice scare tactic to promote passage of the WHO Pandemic Treaty.
Denninger: “It goes on to conclude the circumstances under which one person, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, may approve a drug, device or other mitigation without having to show anything whatsoever, and his or her decision is unreviewable.
Note this well folks: Congress did this.”
Congress did this. It’s already in place for a repeat performance. Unreviewable. A dictatorship. Like Tedros, HHS Becerra is not even a doctor or scientist. On Monkeypox, Tedros overruled the committee majority decision. It is not really about science, anymore.
Covid itself made zero difference to me. Stupid government mandates and the idiots that slavishly followed them did. Shops were often closed and those that were open were often in shopping centres which as a pureblood I could not legally enter. And government restrictions on travel made it illegal to travel over the local council border or more than 3 miles from home. As I lived 2 blocks from the council border it meant that there was not a single baker near me to buy bread from.
So my only response was to buy more stuff online and be a law breaker by ignoring the government restrictions on where I could go.
And now I still buy more stuff online and treat the law and government as something stuck to the bottom of my shoe.
Mish, why did you subtract out online eating? I mean you obviously can’t consume from a distance, but I would consider ordering online and having the food delivered (or self picked up at a drive through to be brought home) to be online sales. We do that quite often these days since most restaurants have online ordering/menus and I’m not just talking about ordering pizza or chinese.
Also groceries are a lot bigger online market than you think if you consider ALL the products in the grocery store (toiletries, cleaning products, canned goods, paper products, pet food etc) and not just meat and veggies. Probably 50-75% of what you buy there can be delivered with no worries about whether it needs to be refrigerated.
Department stores (Sears, JC Penny etc) are heading to extinction. Some like Sears are already there and the rest like Macys, Saks etc are dead men walking other than their online business which is often still profitable (Bed, Bath and Beyond is an example of a business that exists now only online).
I was one of those weirdos who never missed a day at work in office and didn’t get the jab OR Covid so shopping never changed for me because of C19…but what DID force me to more online shopping was the destruction of certain sectors of local retail. One of my duties is broadcast engineer for a number of local radio stations and we used to be able to get many basic electronics supplies and parts at an industrial electronics store. Radio Shack filled in the gap for the little stuff. First RS went down and a few years later the industrial shop shut down. You can buy solder at Lowe’s but that’s about it for my job. It’s all ebay, amazon, or online retail houses for parts. The landfill economy makes it more difficult to actually repair.
Not any change
For the most part, I hate shopping in person.
Food is a huge exception.
I’m still trying to figure out the Walmart business model where if you order, say, 4 cheap items for Same Day Delivery (in the same order), anywhere from 2 to 4 different people/drivers will drop one or two of ’em at your doorstep.
It’s rather insane.
Probably because the products are actually sold by 3rd parties that have to ship on their own.
Retail therapy American style. The 80s term ‘shop till you drop’ is in the Smitsonian. The replacement idiom is ‘shop in your jamies’. Sadly, Americas last comparative advantage. Shopping that is.
I live outside a small town, so if Walmart, the feed store, or the hardware store don’t have it it gets ordered out. The pandemic made no real difference.
I try to buy as much in person as possible – even during the “Covid Scandemic”. We bought our last 4 cars via internet pricing. We got the pricing over the internet and then went in person to sign the papers. We saved A lot of $$$$$$.
I’m an outlier. When Covid lockdown hit, i went to the grocery store at 7am. That was about it, with a few exceptions. I just didn’t buy stuff. No online buying of things at all, then. When i need something, i like to go to the store and pick it up off the shelf. I always paid cash when i went to Target. Then one day i heard on the news that they got hacked. Glad i always used cash.
I believe that “retail” online sales were 0% in 1992 and only 1% in the year 2000. Though my numbers do not make the same exclusions indicated by Mish. Those retail sales grew to 10% by 2019. The pandemic provided a boost to 16% in 2020. After a slight drop in 2021/22, we got back to 16% in 2023. And are likely headed higher.
Our personal household online purchases have grown dramatically in the last 5 years. This includes food, clothing, electronics, etc. We frequent Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot and many others. We book flights, hotels, trips, car rentals, entertainment, tickets etc
The convenience, cost saving, and time saving allow us to focus more of our time on other endeavours.
I think mail order was counted as online in 92. Basically anything bought without physically needing to be there (might also have included phone orders too).
Online sales are way higher than 16%. Probably closer to 30 or more these days.
It didn’t affect me at all but I am sure the experience forced on people who had been avoiding online shopping made them more comfortable to keep doing so.
I’ll also say that as a Prime member, I have bought a lot at Amazon but recently have been buying through Temu. The experience is similar to Amazon, the prices are often 1/3 to 1/2 of what I find on Amazon and if I am going to buy China made products, why not go directly to the source? [lol]
Yes, and Temu has the same quality and WAY cheaper….just a longer wait for shipping (7-10 days)…
Jojo, may you stumble on all the things from Temu that have found their way to your dark, night-time floors. As I probably will. I just finished spending an hour on Temu buying several cheap, cheap, cheap impulse items! And you, yes, that’s right, you – are to blame. You led the way!
Why does no outfit on Temu sell the amazing Bassomatic?
Ron Popeil smiles down at us.
COVID didn’t influence my decision to buy online. 20% off (ore more) is an incentive for me to buy anything from either physical store or online.
Amazon became my “Go To” for virtually all regularly used products. Still do for most paper products in semi-bulk. Cut my distance of travel to a 20-Mile radius, with minimal exceptions. A running list for other items, for a once a week , or so shopping excursion whenever required. Full disclosure, that I must be careful, due to a compromised family member.
The migrants prefer the in-person shopping experience in upscale Oak Brook –
https://www.foxnews.com/us/string-retail-thefts-burglaries-migrants-plaguing-chicago-suburb-authorities.amp
Yes, same place where dozens of Teslas were frozen a few days ago.
Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
Disappointed there was no discussion of unit sales. Overhead costs (e.g. deliveries and returns) are reducing the amount you get vs what things cost.
A 50% Discount at retail sale all of which is rebated back to the merchant so they are whole on their full price, and whether in store or out, creates a universally participated in everyday infrastructure for the self actualization of the most powerful personal experience abailable to humans, namely gratitude (if you’re smart enough to open yourself up to it, and whether you are liberal or libertarian).
So instead of angrily and grudgingly saying: Damn it, Oreos just went up another 10% you can say: Yipee and thank you Mr. merchant, Mr. politician and Mr. paradigm analyst for making the economy and money system serve me instead of forcing me to slavishly serve them!
You’re welcome!
My daughter used the shop-online option for the local grocery chain with the drive-up pickup. Now it has become normalized for her — this is how she does most of her shopping.
I can envision a future where this becomes increasingly encouraged by vendors as a means to help curtail shoplifting.
I think what old is new again. Just different process, with more junk than quality goods.
On Line sales is just the same as Mail-order retailing.
Mail-order retailing became a big business in Chicago. During the half century that followed the establishment of a mail-order company by Aaron Montgomery Ward in 1872, Chicago companies dominated the business of selling directly to consumers across the country by using catalogs and deliveries through the mail.
In Canada it was Eatons and Simpsons, I remember getting the christmas catalogue and looking at all the toys. If I was lucky my mom would order something for me, but usally shoes and clothes.
Service Merchandise online without the cloud. HR strikes back : AMZN is laying off. The cost of labor and shipping is too high. They might preempt before a potential slump. Online sales are in a bubble produced by boomers and zoomers alike who imitated each others and herd together during covid. During the Fed zero rates and stimulus. The biggest risk is China. Perhaps the Hooties !
After 4 years online sales are below 2020 high !
I suspect that 9% in 92 was mail order as you noted. I think online is just anything you get without making a physical visit to a store.
Some are using credit cards to survive while a whole lot of others are using them to maintain a life style. For the latter group, wants = needs, and online shopping and front door delivery makes it so much easier to scratch that itch. Many are waiting for boomer mom and/or dad to kick off so they can take thier savings and piss it away on even more useless crap they don’t need. Alot of this crap will, ironically, end up in a storage unit paid for with credit.
The area I live has a Facebook page for people to give away stuff they don’t want. I regularly see brand new items being posted after the owner found the items “buried in a closet”. I once got a non-working snow blower on this Facebook page that I repaired for $20 (just needed a new carburetor).
I have no clue how this debt fueled consumption will eventually play out, but my gut tells me it will end very badly.
Yes. I started buying groceries online and have continued abet at a bit less than during the full covid rage. It’s at a big store chain with a local store and they deliver without any markup. It they are out of something they give me a call and we find substitutes. The butcher although doesn’t deliver and the fishmonger either so we swing by the openair market that we have one a week to get the best seafood you have ever seen.
Our families experience is similar to yours. But in our case, it was caused by me being in a cast for a couple of months and not driving and since I do the shopping it meant checking out online delivery.
I found Walmart to be excellent and of course it already has great prices. I still buy my meat and veggies elsewhere (Walmarts are low quality) but pretty much everything else (canned goods, laundry items, cleaning products, paper products, toothpatse/mouthwash, coffee, sugar, beer/wine etc) I get there and have delivered because it’s the same brands sold at the supermarkets anyway only for far less cost.
The African knockout game changed my habit. I never shop at malls. I never visit any place where Africans congregate.
The main reason I avoid retail now is it has become just a miserable experience.
Just last week I had a business meeting near a mall, and having a trip coming up decided to kill some time before the meeting and shop for a few things. Found a shirt I liked, none in my size. Found a sweater a liked, none in my size. New pair of sunglasses to replace ones I lost, $100 more at Sunglass Hut than I could get on-line. It was in the morning so the mall was not crowded yet, but in general I find stores over-crowded, lines long, and 50-50 if you get a pleasant or surly check-out person.
So unless I really, really need to get things in person due to known availability, bulk, or other technical reason, I buy on-line.
After my experience in the mall above I got everything I wanted on-line from the comfort of my home, no issues with stock, crowds, smash-and-grab mobs, homeless people wandering through the public areas, and so on.
I must be lucky because the mall I go to is like a ghost town. Just last week @ Dillard’s, I could count the number of people on my hands. And this was a Sunday afternoon.
SPX [1M] : If SPX imitates Jan/Oct 2018, Xmas massacre 2018 is next. Online will be a bust. If SPX cont to 5.5K/6.5K, due to the high inflation, online will be too expensive for the majority of the people.
How about inflation adjusted consumer credit? I’m eyeballing about a 20% increase in nominal terms in 4 years, most of that is inflation.
Covid did not cause us to buy more online. We didn’t stop going to grocery stores and did not even once get food delivered. It seems so many people did have food delivered, and in fact still do. We didn’t eat out for two years. The effects of covid such as restaurants going out of business and changes in availability of such things as toilet paper, paper towels and Kleenex (in 230 sheets per box) has caused me now to order Kleenex from Amazon, because they are simply not available locally in the size I want. The changes from covid are still happening, but this is the first time I had to order an ordinary product from Amazon due to lack of availability. Our local grocery store used to sell huge (store brand) paper towels – not the stupid perforated towels – but that ended during covid. Now they don’t have the big (store brand) Kleenex boxes. I can’t believe I paid 10 bucks a box on Amazon!
Kleenex Trusted Care Facial Tissue, 2-ply, 230-count, 10-pack
$18.49
After $5 OFF
https://www.costco.com/kleenex-trusted-care-facial-tissue%2c-2-ply%2c-230-count%2c-10-pack.product.100089150.html
We don’t have Costco, but thanks – I’ll have to check whether one can join and have things delivered/shipped. That is far better pricing.
I already did a lot of buying online, but I got serious about prepping before and during the lockdown and then I significantly stepped up that activity.
Since, I may do a little more buying online than I used to, but not all that much. Of course, I have a deep pantry to “shop” from these days.
how did Covid change our online buying?