One of the reasons why ecommerce is destroying the traditional trade in some categories is that the way people consume certain products has changed from the tangible to the mail. First he went with music, then with movies and is now happening with books. The products are no longer physical to become an electronic file.

Not that there have not been attempts to buying electronics unfold over physical spaces. In the summer of last year, to take one recent example, the Confederation of Unions and Associations Booksellers announced that he had just signed an agreement with Tagus, the ecosystem of the electronic book to booksellers lifelong they could sell ebooks in their libraries. They would function as a traditional point of sale, with the recommendations of the bookseller always, but buy from untraditional way, through download cards that would be the key to be with those products.

Barnes & Noble, the giant US chain bookstores (and possibly one of the largest in the world), included in their physical stores points energizing Nook, its platform of ebooks, and the bet did not work out as well as they wanted . By giving, they came up to give free ebooks who were with her ereader stores. Although physical stores of Barnes & Noble are a platform to sell ebooks, with technology that allows you to go to them and buy electronic books, for many around the ebook environment is cannibalizing the brand and the bookstore chain has created his enemy, it has failed to cover what it loses by lower sales of paper books and everything has gone home.

All these attempts to cover physical store in which electronic sales are wasting because of electronic versions may have been, from the outset, doomed. A study by Nielsen on e – commerce allows end users are more than open to buy products like ebooks online stores and possibly hardly receptive to do offline. In fact, the intention of buying these products is very similar to the actual purchase: 35% of consumers browsing, to see ebooks and 34% just by buying them.

But it is not just ebooks or intangible

Although the success of e-commerce is not – and will not be – limited to categories how are you. Indeed, since the beginning of time, what else it has purchased online are products or services rather involve no difference between store or network where the network makes things easier.

Consider, for example, on trips. Buy a ticket via the Internet is much easier than going to a travel agency for it. In fact, everything related to the tourism industry (airline tickets, hotel reservations, etc.) is what occupies the top of online sales and is the entry point for many consumers in ecommerce.According to the latest study of online purchase intention Nielsen, consumers continue to buy – quite – these services on the network. A 44% of buyers will travel with internet services, a figure that exceeds even those who sail looking information (42%).

Also tickets for events and shows will remain high on the list of things to buy online. 41% buy these services online, although only 38% will sail to get information for them.

But the most interesting of these figures is that consumers are more open to buying other things online. Input, users are more than willing to jump into ecommerce. According to data from Nielsen, the intention of buying online has doubled in 12 of the 22 categories that divide the market. And yes, the clothes have an intention to acquire 48% and 42% shoes (standard products to buy on the net) but they are not the only ones who get good results.

Buyers are increasingly willing to also buy other things on the internet, things that until now still left in the offline stores. Child care products (all those baby products such as diapers or similar) grew by 12% in intention to purchase online, from 8% to 20 in just three years. Alcoholic beverages have also risen: 8% that was willing to buy them online in 2011 has become 17% in 2014. And the same goes for pet supplies, which has gone from a purchase intent 9 a 21%.

Shopping, as we understand we do to go to the supermarket, it has not grown with such a prodigious rate, although 27% of those surveyed by Nielsen has already intend to buy fresh products online. This figure is due mainly to the ease with which the millennials are driven by online supermarkets.

It does not have to be the end of the store offline

Are traditional stores therefore doomed to disappear? Stores life can still do many things to stay. They can take advantage of the benefits of the economy of the long tail of niche interests to find and exploit them. They can become showcases for online purchase. Or you can make your attention always the differentiator.

Although whatever they do, the truth is that the Internet is an increasingly powerful competitor and especially increasingly present. Stay out of the vicissitudes of the network is virtually impossible.