In the last few years, e-commerce has caused a huge threat to traditional commerce, especially for those retailers who own small businesses.By September 30th, 2013, the financing value of Taobao (the biggest online shopping market in Asia-Pacific center) has become more than  1,200 million dollars.

Compared with traditional commerce, the biggest advantage of e-commerce is lower costs since for online stores, there is not space rent. Except for it, online stores also get an access to more customers as well as their suggestions and comments in a more direct way. Partly because of all those obvious advantages of e-commerce, traditional commerce has been through a really tough time. I analyzed the store growth rates of top 100 US retailers in 2012 and found that almost 30% of them have been through a negative growth and when it comes to sales growth nearly 20% of them have. As mentioned, they are top 100 retailers which means their counterparts must have been in a worse condition.

In this case, some people tend to think e-commerce might replace traditional one in a short run. However, consumers still need to shop in person since it is more trust-worthy and time-saving. Although with all those advantages, it remains hard for online shops to be regulated. Frauds and low-quality products tend to let people lose confidence of e-commerce. Consequently, in my opinion, E-commerce and traditional commerce can actually make more connections to both be in a win-win situation.

Resources: http://www.stores.org/2013/Top-100-Retailers

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