Over the last five years, online transactions have doubled their total retail market share, growing from seven to fourteen percent according to Statista. While the pandemic has certainly accelerated the growth of the eCommerce industry, its growth prior to 2020 suggests that this has simply been a speeding up of the inevitable.

Common wisdom seems to suggest that the shift in consumer behavior towards buying products online is bad news for smaller, local retailers. Proponents of this view say[...]