THE E-COMMERCE REPORT: Mobile Is Giving Traditional Retailers A Chance To Bounce Back These Holidays

Mobile allows traditional retailers a chance to catch up in e-commerce.

Using smartphones and tablets as shopping devices is a relatively new trend, and legacy retailers are using it to catch up to the original e-commerce giants. For example, Target's audience is more mobile-centric now than even Amazon's.

In a new report, BI Intelligence takes an exhaustive look at the e-commerce market, looks at mobile's surge, estimates holiday sales and shipments, tracks consumer behavior, and outlines the mobile and online strategies that retailers are using to catch up in e-commerce.

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Here are some of the key points in the report:

• Mobile commerce growth is explosive. Purchases made using a smartphone or tablet rose 48% year-over-year (YoY) in the second quarter, to about $8 billion. That's three times faster than desktop-based e-commerce, and the fastest increase in mobile commerce spending since the first quarter of 2012.
• Mobile is a powerful engine for offline and online sales. More than 60% of US web traffic on the nine largest retail websites in July 2014 came from users on mobile devices, according to comScore.
• Traditional retailers are finally succeeding in mobile and e-commerce. This is thanks in part to the smartphone and tablet revolutions, which gave them a chance at a "do-over" in online retail. Growth in e-commerce sales finally stabilized in the second quarter of 2014 at an average of 22% at top retailers, including Nordstrom, Gap, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and JC Penney. That means those retailers are actually growing faster than the e-commerce industry at-large.
• The retail wars are now moving into same-day delivery. Watch for Google, Amazon, and other companies, including Wal-mart, to have a greater presence this holiday season when it comes to getting packages to people. Both FedEx and UPS have already committed to hiring 145,000 seasonal workers for the holiday months this year to meet online shipping demand, but Amazon and Google are moving to handle more of their own logistics, in part by leveraging same-day delivery services.

The final holiday quarter of the year is retailers' do-or-die moment, a trial membership to BI Intelligence allows access to all our downloadable charts and data on the upcoming e-commerce holidays.

In full, the report:

• Examines the relationship that consumers have with retailers across different touch points and how those interactions culminate in a purchase.
• Includes survey data about why consumers shop online during the holidays, and what types of products they plan to purchase from the web this year.
• Takes a deep-dive into mobile commerce and the factors that are driving shoppers to make more purchases via smartphones and tablets.
• Compares the online audiences of each major retailer, including a breakdown of how shoppers access those sites and apps.
• Includes case studies of Nordstrom, Wal-Mart, Gap, and JC Penney, to show how they are gaining ground in the competitive e-commerce marketplace.

To access the E-Commerce Market Update Report and BI Intelligence's ongoing coverage on the future of retail, mobile, and e-commerce - including charts, data, and analysis - sign up for a trial membership today.

Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.