Going to hang around the city’s premiershopping district of San Francisco’s Union Square some day is not an easy work. Hundreds of people laden with purchases battle along the pavements， search despairingly for scarce taxis or straggle① to get through Macy’s doors. It is enough to put anybody off shopping for life.
But wait：surely Christmas shopping in recent years was different？ After all， this is close to Silicon Valley， the center of the Internet revolution and the new economy， the land of the timeless billionaires② who bought all their presents online at midnight the day after Thanksgiving. Yet the crowds in Union Square were as bad as ever. They seemed oblivious③ of a large billboard advertisement above their heads for one of the Bay Area’s many dots， coms， which flashed the message：“Say Goodbye to the Mall？” And they paid no attention to the advertisement on many of their shopping bags that pointed a way out of their predicament④： “Online Shopping. No Experience Needed.”
Electronic commerce， it seems， still has its limits， even in California. For all the feverish⑤ excitement about the tripling⑥ of electronic shopping last holiday season， the total spent by American consumers online still amounted to only about 1% of all retail sales—barely a tenth of the revenues from another method of distance selling that has been in use for a century：the catalogue. And the electronic shopping was concentrated on quite a narrow range of goods：mainly books， toys and music. Worse， the holiday season threw up as many stories of failed and late deliveries as of explosive growth. And， more recently， a string of hackers attacks have temporarily disabled some of the best known e-commerce websites. Perhaps retailers in the physical world need not lose much sleep over the Internet， or at least not yet？
Yet they are losing sleep， and are right to be doing so， for three reasons. The first is that mighty oaks from tiny acorns do grow. Electronic commerce may not amount to much at the moment， but it is growing very fast. In business to business transactions， in particular， the advantages and cost savings to be had from dealing on the Internet have caused e-commerce to mushroom⑦. At present， such transactions account for as much as 80% of all e-commerce. But even in the business to consumer field， the main subject of this survey， the growth of online commerce has been extremely fast despite consumers undoubted attachment to their traditional methods of shopping.
The second reason concerns critical mass. In many areas of retailing and commerce， theInternet is unlikely to capture more than a few percentage points of the market for several years to come. But even a small share can quickly start to have a big effect. In the travel business， for instance， margins are so thin that a loss of only 3%～5% of the market to the Internet threatens to drive large numbers of traditional travel agents out of business.
The third reason is more worrying still： traditional retailers， forall the strengths of their brand names and their existing relationships with suppliers and customers， have found it extraordinarily hard to compete online. There are formidable obstacles that stand in the offline intermediaries way. It may turn out that the biggest effect of online business to consumer commerce is not its size， but the way it changes the rules of the retailing game—to the evident perplexity⑧ of those who have hitherto played it best.
Even so， the place to start is still with the size of the business and how fast it is likely to grow. For example， online businesses to consumer transactions in America were worth some 20 billion in 2002. That figure grew to some 184 billion in 2004. 39million Americans shopped online in 1999， and that nearly half of them spent 500 or more. Within just a few years， the Internet could capture 5% of America’s retail market， with other rich countries likely to follow in its wake. By 2010， forecasts Goldman Sachs， an investment bank， electronic shopping could account for 15～20% of retail sales. Jeff Mallett， president of Yahoo！ Online retailing will grow “as fast as e-mail”.
① straggle v. 迷路，落伍，蔓生，四散，漫延
② billionaire n. 亿万富翁
③ oblivious adj. 遗忘的，忘却的，健忘的
④ predicament n. 困境
⑤ feverish adj. 发烧的，热病的，狂热的，兴奋的
⑥ tripling n. 三重
⑦ mushroom v. 迅速生长，迅速增加，采蘑菇
⑧ perplexity n. 困惑混乱
网上购物
如果哪天去旧金山的主要商业区联合广场逛街可不是件轻松的事。成百上千的人带着大大小小的购物袋拥挤在人行道上，有的在拼命地寻找着出租车，有的在尽力地挤出莫西商场的门口。这种经历足以让所有人从此对购物望而却步。
但是且慢，最近几年的圣诞购物应该有所不同吧？毕竟靠近网络革命和新经济的中心——硅谷。在这里那些不戴领带的百万富翁们早在感恩节第二天的午夜就把礼物买好了。然而联合广场依旧是人潮如涌。他们似乎根本就看不见头顶上一家海湾地区的网络公司所做的大幅广告，上面闪烁着“对商场说再见吧”的字样；许多购物袋上印着的“在线购物，无须经验”的广告给人们指明了摆脱购物困扰的途径，但他们也熟视无睹。
看来即使在加州，电子商务也存在着局限。虽然上一个假日人们为电子购物营业额增长了两倍而欣喜若狂，但所有美国人在线购物额也不过是总零售额的1％，仅是目录购物——已有一百多年历史的另一种远程购物方式——的十分之一。另外，电子购物仅仅局限于某些商品，主要是书籍、玩具、音乐等。更为糟糕的是，假日期间伴随着业务增长的喜讯的是一起又一起的投递失败和晚点的事件。近来一系列的黑客攻击事件导致一些著名电子商务网站暂时关闭。或许现实世界中的零售商还用不着为因特网失眠，或者至少现在不用？
然而，他们失眠了。有三条理由使得他们的担心不是杞人忧天。首先，橡果虽小，足以长成参天大树。电子商务目前看来虽不足为虑，但其增长速度很快。尤其在商家对商家的交易模式中，由于因特网交易的优势和成本的降低，使得此类电子商务迅速增长。现在商家对商家的交易模式的交易量占电子商务总交易量的80％。商家对消费者的交易模式中，其增长速度也极为迅速，尽管消费者仍旧对传统的购物方式难以割舍。
第二个原因跟临界点有关。在商业和零售业的许多领域，因特网在几年中不会占据太多的市场份额，但是这一部分份额可能会产生巨大的影响。例如在旅游业中，由于利润空间狭小，即使失去3％～5％的份额也会使大量的传统旅游代理失去饭碗。
第三个原因更加使传统的零售业头疼。尽管有强大的品牌号召力，与供货商及消费者有着良好的关系，他们仍然发现同电子商务进行竞争非常困难。传统零售业所面临着难以逾越的障碍。商家面向消费者的在线购物所产生的最大的影响或许并不在于其规模，而是它改变零售业游戏规则的方式——而到现在为止，传统零售业一直是这套游戏规则的最大赢家，他们显然感到困惑。
虽然如此，但仍然可以从在线购物的业务规模及其增长速度来判断它的发展趋势。例如，2002年美国商家面向消费者的在线购物交易额大约为200亿美元，2004年达到1，840亿美元。1999年有3，900万美国人通过网络购物，其中大约一半花费了500美元以上。几年后，美国5％的零售市场将被网络占据，其他一些富裕的国家也会紧随其后。到2010年，电子购物将占据零售市场的15％～20％，在线零售业将像e-mail一样快速发展。
