It is my belief that all business will take a hit over the next 2 years, but it is in this time that the internet has a unique advantage to accelerate its already predicted growth to take a bigger chunk of market share from traditional business. My top 10 reasons:

1. Gas: ecommerce companies offering free shipping married to people who don’t want to use their precious gas will drive more online sales.
2. Price Comparisons: People are going to take advantage of the ease of use of comparing 50 stores online in minutes versus taking a weekend driving around the city.
3. Advertising Efficiency: Although there will always be a huge place for traditional advertising, with online advertising and a good analytics program, you can see exactly where every dollar goes. This is much more attractive to businesses in a down economy.
4. Less Big Brand Advertisers: Big advertisers will start cutting budgets, leaving plenty of open ad space for a flurry of little guys to come online. Its the little businesses that make up the internet, bring them on!
5. Previous Brand Reluctance: believe it or not, there were many manufacturers that were reluctant to let retailers sell their product online. I would imagine this restriction will dissolve as they are scrambling to find anyway to sell their products. If more retailers can sell more unique brands online, more buyers will come.
6. TV Shows: As brands slow ad spending dollars in the TV DVR world, Television shows will start to become more aggressive in showing their shows online, which opens up all sorts of online ad dollars. Online TV is protected from DVR’s as the site can decide to put controls on. More people watching shows equals more money for ads on those shows.
7. Investment Dollars: As more people go online, more money is made online. As more money is made online, more investment dollars will be thrown at it. The more investment dollars thrown online, the bigger online businesses get. The bigger they get….ah, you know where this is going…
8. Lower overhead: most online retailers’ overhead is significantly lower than traditional brick and mortar retailers. Because of this, prices are lower. If prices are lower, people can buy more things, and spread their dollars over a couple of businesses versus just one. Consumers saving money is a great way for them to spend more. Not only does this point help online, it helps the economy as a whole.
9. Less Taxes: Currently, if you purchase outside your own state, you save your state sales tax. In my case, this is 7.75%. That is a huge savings and enough of a reason for me to go online versus offline. In poor economic times, people will look for anything to save upwards of 7%.
10. Virtual Services: With people wanting to find the best prices on services, they are more likely to find more boutique service with lower overhead online and use that service virtually, versus in person. This will save them a lot of money and get the same talented person. (lawyers, accountants, consultants).

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 18th, 2008 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Internet Trends, Online Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.