Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is the biggest shopping day of the year in America. According to US News and World Reports, this year 99.1 million Americans shopped at malls and stores. However, an even larger number – 108 million – shopped online. Remarkably enough, this gap appears to be widening rapidly — in 2015, 103 million shopped online and 102 million shopped in stores.
This growing disintermediation enabled by technology is not limited to retail. For example, the traditional taxi service is quickly getting supplemented and supplanted by ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft. Interestingly, these new offerings ultimately grow the market instead of just replacing the existing medium as evidenced by Uber’s estimated sales of $500 million in San Francisco adding to the $140 million sales for taxis.
