For all the excitement around commerce these days, there have been only a few really big changes in the last 100 years. Sears pioneered the mail-order catalog, chains like Walmart consolidated big box retail, and Amazon brought inventory online. After more than 10 years of growth, e-commerce only accounts for about 8% of total commerce in the US. Clearly, we have a long way to go in moving more commerce online. I believe the next evolution in e-commerce?what some refer to as ?social commerce??will use customer identity and data to better personalize and serve customers well beyond what Amazon has done to date. Commerce, both offline and online, has historically been largely anonymous and impersonal. Offline, customers walk into stores, see the exact same merchandise, are greeted by employees who don?t recognize them, and are all bound to the same terms and conditions on the back of every purchase receipt. Online, the pen and paper of the old mail-order catalog were replaced with drop-down menus and search boxes. Amazon and other sites emerged to provide customers with anything they were looking for at low prices. As disruptive as the online catalog has been, the success of these online stores is measured by three and four letter acronyms: LTV ?lifetime value? and COCA ?cost of customer acquisition.? However, a shopping experience cannot be summarized entirely by metrics. 
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/blFJN0Y6n_g/
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