EL COMERCIO ELECTRÓNICO como concepto ya es cosa del pasado: ahora todo es, simplemente, comercio.

So what’s online and what’s offline? And does it matter anymore in retail? These are the big questions behind this month’s MIT Technology Review Business Report. “Getting into data, analytics, or mobile isn’t even a decision anymore, so we should stop calling it e-commerce and call it just commerce, or maybe pervasive commerce,” says Chris Fletcher, a research director at Gartner who works with retailers. “It’s happening and you have to deal with it. But companies are just getting used to the idea that it’s all one experience.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, which tracks economic data, only 5.2 percent of U.S. retail purchases were made online in 2012 (13.1 percent if you don’t include gasoline, groceries, or automobiles). So in-person sales still dominate. But these figures underestimate the effect of the Internet. When stores like Best Buy survey their customers, they find that 80 percent of them have already searched for price information online. A third of them do so on a phone while inside a store.