Global connections

According to a report in WARC News today, Forrester are predicting an increase to the global online population of some 40% by 2014. They reckon it had already expanded from less than 1 billion individuals in 2005 to 1.6 billion in 2009 and will continue to grow to 2.3 billion individuals by 2014.

As you might expect, Forrester expect China and India to be key drivers of this expansion - with virtual retail mirroring the increase in physical outlets - but also Russia and Brazil.

Growth is good but we marketers must never forget that these are aggregated figures and each node, each login is made by an individual person, whether we call them netizens or not. Personalisation will surely be the key to converting more of them into online consumers but, simply by the laws of probability, the huge numbers involved suggest that online retail sales are about to go through the stratosphere.