Some Risks Remain
Of course, the digital domain can be fraught with peril for retailers and customers, as well. "There's always a risk related around ecommerce," Kotlyar said. A widespread computer problem, either confined to one retailer or as part of a broader outage such as the DDoS attack on domain host company Dyn last month, could cause a retailer to lose millions.
And delivery to customers' homes or workplaces is only convenient if the merchandise actually arrives as promised. "If we have perfect weather, maybe the risk isn't so great," Sides said, but he pointed out Mother Nature doesn't always play along. Three years ago, a rush of holiday orders combined with bad weather left UPS and FedEx scrambling, and customers who didn't get their gifts by Christmas fuming.
Retailers also won't abandon brick-and-mortar entirely because physical stores still do have a role to play, experts say. Deloitte's research found that two-thirds of shoppers will practice what analysts call "webrooming;" that is, checking out an item online before visiting a store to purchase it, and half will do the reverse, visiting a store to see an item before researching and purchasing it online.
As customers come to expect fast, free shipping and equally painless returns, Michael Lasser, senior equity research analyst at UBS, said a network of storefronts gives old-school retailers a distributional leg up.
"What traditional brick-and-mortar retailers have is stores that are located in close proximity to population centers," he said. "They'll start to balance the playing