Two out of five US retailers don't have a store

Quite a few retail businesses are still apprentices when it comes to cross-channel integration, concludes the study.

In 2007, notes the report, commercial and nonprofit marketers spent $173.2 billion on direct marketing in the United States. Measured against total US sales, these advertising expenditures generated approximately $2.025 trillion in incremental sales. In 2007, direct marketing accounted for 10.2 percent of total US gross domestic product. Also in 2007, there were 1.6 million direct marketing employees in the US. Their collective sales efforts directly supported nearly 9.0 million other jobs, accounting for a total of 10.6 million US jobs.

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