While a good deal of the negative news on the economy, specifically on consumer spending, consumer sentiment, and buying behavior, is impacted by the rule of the self-fulfilling prophesy, there is reason for concern.  Over 6,000 store closings were announced over the previous 12+ months in the US.  The most objective observer has to acknowledge that consumer spending has slowed (not necessarily declined) and this shift has significantly impacted how retailers are planning to grow their businesses. 

The vast majority of retailers have major investments in real estate and labor, thus the store will continue to be a major focus to drive top line sales.  Further focus will continue to be given to delivering customer experience in an operationally efficient manner.  This includes driving down the cost of infrastructure, managing store labor, closing unproductive stores, squeezing the last drops out of supply chain efficiency initiatives, and reducing or eliminating large capital projects related to stores.     

Retailers are increasingly reallocating IT and marketing budgets to Web-related initiatives based on the following principles:

• eCommerce projects typically have low expenditures relative to store projects
• Retailers can ring fence eCommerce projects and control them at a corporate level without having to involve (train, deploy, message) store-level employees
• Upside for eCommerce projects is seen as exponential ("moving the needle" is a favorite phrase of retail executives)
• eCommerce projects can be allocated to fairly nimble internal (or external SI) organizations to get them done

Some notes of caution:

• "The Feature Chase" - More on this in a future blog post, but this relates to the proliferation and blind exuberance for new site features as a substitute for strategic planning. 
• As I have said before, eCommerce is 'A' channel in a retailer's quest to deliver an exceptional experience to its customers and not 'THE' channel.