I saw the teaser to the "internet sales slowdown" on Drudge, and then the full story in the NYT on the weekend. So I love the smackdown Jack Shafer administers in Slate Magazine on the same topic.
The story, by two normally pretty solid writers, is a great example of where anecdotes overwhelm data. In this case, the data does not support the conclusion, as Jack so aptly notes:
The economy grows about 3 percent in real terms per year, or about 5.5 percent to 6 percent in nominal terms. So anything that's growing faster than that is growing faster than the economy as a whole. Online sales, even if their growth rate would fall to 9 percent, would still be growing much faster than the economy (and hence other retailers as a whole). Wal-Mart's has sales of a few hundred billion dollars (i.e. about three times the size of the internet retailing space). Its same-store sales are basically flat, rising about 1.5 percent to 2 percent—in real terms, they're shrinking. Online sales are continuing to grow impressively in both absolute and real terms. Even if they only grow 6 percent a year, they will still grow nicely and take market share from bricks-and-mortar.
Facts. Pah. They just get in the way of a good story.