Future of eCommerce: International Growth Trends

• Global eCommerce sales are expected to total $5.5 trillion worldwide in 2022.

The dramatic rise in e-commerce amid movement restrictions induced by COVID-19 increased online retail sales’ share of total retail sales from 16% to 19% in 2020 & further in 2021 & 2022. According to a report, online retail sales grew markedly in several countries, with the Republic of Korea reporting the highest share at 25.9% in 2020, up from 20.8% the year before & after.

Global eCommerce sales are expected to total $5.5 trillion worldwide in 2022. This number is expected to continue growing over the next few years, proving that eCommerce is becoming an increasingly lucrative option for businesses. This includes business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) sales, and is equivalent to 30% of global gross domestic product (GDP) that year. These statistics show the growing importance of online activities. They also point to the need for countries, especially developing ones, to have such information as they rebuild their economies in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Omnichannel shopping will become more prevalent

 We are entering the world of “phygital”—physical and digital at the same time, where there is not a physical world or digital world in retail, but rather a completely connected one. Traffic in stores is almost certainly going to be down permanently. As you see the shift to e-commerce, whether it’s five, ten, or 15 points, some portion of your customers are not coming back to the store or not coming back at the same frequency they used to. So being able to maximize the value of each trip is going to be incredibly important.

The seemingly unstoppable rise of e-commerce, sophisticated customer analytics, personalized sounds, and smells, digital mannequins that “know” your clothing preferences, and automated home delivery—are just some of the elements that will shape the shopping experience in the coming years

• Social shopping is on the rise

 Around 3.5 billion people, 44%+ of the world’s population – use social media, with consumers in developing countries more likely to have a smartphone with social media apps than they are a laptop. On average consumers spend two and a half hours a day on social platforms5, with more than 300 million new social media users coming online between 2019 and 20206. For many people, social platforms are the entry point for everything they do online – news, entertainment, and communication. Now commerce is in the mix too. And it could soon become so powerful as a destination in its own right that it starts to threaten the dominance of e-commerce and search giants.

• The center of eCommerce is shifting from the western hemisphere

The retail industry in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is on the verge of a pivotal shift. E-commerce is becoming a reality, reinventing consumers’ path to purchase, forming new customer experiences, disrupting business models, and creating growth opportunities for large and small retailers as well as for a new generation of e-commerce pure players.

Prompted by a shortfall in regional e-commerce data and insights, Google and Bain & Company initiated this study with the objective of supporting investors, entrepreneurs, retailers, and other ecosystem stakeholders in decision-making. The study assesses the current e-commerce market dynamics (on both the demand and supply sides) in MENA to inform the future outlook for the industry while examining various models of e-commerce development in other markets.

• B2B eCommerce is a bigger giant

 Digital commerce is growing rapidly and is expanding into numerous channels, devices, industries, and markets. However, when we think of eCommerce, we often have B2C transactions in mind. That is businesses selling to the general public or consumers. B2B eCommerce, on the other hand, involves business-to-business transactions and must take into account the interests and requirements of business customers.

Booming online sales force brands to focus on streamlining internal processes and improving customer experience, convenience, and ease of use. As technology gets smarter and more sophisticated, it will play an increasingly bigger role in business-to-business commerce.

• Ecommerce personalization will be a standard

The most successful retailers continually improve their product offering to new and existing customers as well as nurture their customers’ shopping experience in a way that continuously makes customers welcome and happy shopping with them. All best-in-class personalization platforms are driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning; which track on-site and customer data points in real-time and then deliver a unique personalized experience to each site visitor (whether window shoppers or customers).

With the infrastructure in place to efficiently and accurately collect data in real-time, the next step is formulating a personalization strategy around the specific needs and size of your business. The personalized shopping strategy you employ will typically depend on the size of your customer base, the volume of sales your store generates, and also the tools you use to deploy personalization.

• Mobile shopping revolution

Mobile is continuously shaping the landscape of customer engagement. For the past couple of years, the mobile market has already matured and will already be reaching 70% of eCommerce traffic by the end of 2018.

This growing ubiquity of mobile usage in eCommerce is due to the desire of shoppers to accomplish their transactions without having to go through a desktop. They want that convenience of shopping right at their fingertips. With their mobile devices, shoppers can now browse, research and purchase products, whenever and wherever they want.