From baloney to bots: recent trends in online sales

Three decades ago, American author and astronomer Clifford Stoll famously called breathless forecasts of a world-changing internet “baloney”. In a 1995 Newsweek article, laden with sarcasm, he argued buyers wanted the “human touch” and wrote: “We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obsolete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire internet handles in a month?” It’s fair to say that things have changed. The following are some of the key trends in online sales in 2026: Almost all Irish internet users shop online. In Ireland, 96% of internet users made a purchase online in 2024, the highest percentage of any EU country, according to Eurostats; at least 80% of the Irish population between the ages of 16 and 74 had ordered goods or services online in the three months before the survey. And figures from the Office of National Statistics for the UK show that the percentage of retail sales that were made online has grown from 2.8% in 2006 to 27.3% in 2026.