Did e-commerce save Christmas 2009?

“Saving Christmas” may be overstating the case…the evidence suggests that consumers were spending in stores, not just online. (Assuming, of course, that they could get out of their driveways!) But there’s no doubt that e-commerce continues to grow at a much faster rate than pure bricks-and-mortar retail. As Paula Rosenblum points out on Retail Wire, the smartest retailers (Walmart, for example) have an integrated strategy to capitalize on the growth of e-commerce sales and to use their websites to drive store traffic. Any retailer interested in fueling its internal growth needs to look long and hard at its online selling strategy: Merchandise content, logistics, marketing, and the rest of the package.