Posted on 12 April by Andrea Magossi in E-commerce
In this article, we analyze how purchasing behaviors have changed. And which way Coronavirus has pushed consumers to buy online. Here is what we will cover:
- The impact of the pandemic on the online market.
- Data and statistics on the growth rate of the e-commerce sector over the last year.
- How the consumers are changing their purchasing behaviors.
- New growing e-commerce trends in 2021.
The feeling of living in an increasingly digital world is powerful. Nowadays, if we have to move, we think of an Uber, when we are hungry, we call a Deliveroo, and if only we dare to think about something to buy, Amazon's suggestions appear on each of our digital screens. After the pandemic has taken over our physical life, it is as if there has been a homogeneous transposition to digital!
Not that before, we didn't take advantage of the applications or the support of the internet in daily life, but it certainly wasn't that common and obvious. Just for pointing it out, in 2021, I found myself with my 80-year-old grandmother, who calls me with extreme ease on Zoom while buying the new dinner service on Amazon.
I must say that I did not expect it!
It seems that the digitization process of small businesses and the middle-aged population had an acceleration in the last year that probably would have taken another decade. As the world is brought to its knees by a global pandemic, the digital market is experiencing its most significant growth. All this is at least a reason for reflection. But aside from the thoughts, which go away with the wind, let's look at the data.
This graphic by GroupM shows a forecast of the eCommerce market growth concerning the global economy.
Source: GroupM
E-commerce is now a consolidated reality destined to gain more and more importance within the global market. This pandemic has shown us that those businesses that had not embraced digital in the past have suffered repercussions. Those with a high digital structure have been able to survive. Often able to distance themselves from their competitors.
A Word Street Journal report stated the following. Retail sales in China grew 34% from a year ago to 101 billion yuan. Unlike most traditional business retail, marketplace such as Amazon, Alibaba, and eBay have seen revenue spikes over the past year.
“Our domestic core commerce business has fully recovered to pre-Covid-19 levels across the board,” declared Maggie Wu, Chief Financial Officer for Alibaba.
On the other side of the world, in the same wake travels Amazon the, e-commerce giant for excellence, calculated that the Bezos platform almost doubled its profit during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, in South America, the rise of Mercado Libre seems unstoppable. Since its foundation in 1999, its growth has been constant, and today it has a volume of payments equal to US$14.506 million.
Source: Statista
Russia represents another attractive spot for the future of E-commerce. The penetration of online shopping in the Kremlin state has increased from 7% in 2019 to about 11% in 2020.
Other markets that are growing their total retail sales are South Africa and India. These emerging markets will represent a decisive key for the global development of the e-commerce landscape.
See the ranking with the top 10 countries by online sales volumes:
- China: US$672 billion
- USA: US$340 billion
- United Kingdom: US$99 billion
- Japan: US$79 billion
- Germany: US$73 billion
- France: US$43 billion
- South Korea: US$37 billion
- Canada: US$30 billion
- Russia: US$20 billion
- Brazil: US$19 billion
Source: https://kinsta.com/blog/ecommerce-statistics/
Now that said, there is no longer any doubt that consumers' buying habits will move more and more online over the following years.
Let's have a look at the Insider Intelligence forecast, where the platform, at the end of 2020, predicted that m-commerce would reach US$284 billion in the United States. If we compare it to the current mobile commerce forecast saying that the expectation is to reach $ 3.56 trillion in 2021 - 22.3% more than in 2020, we can then realize the speed of the growth rate at which the digital world is moving. Mobile phone usage to order and pay for a product is now a routine practice for many users. The pandemic has done nothing but accentuates this phenomenon since quarantine. Many people could have access mainly to their smartphones, and in every home, there was no one PC available for each family component.
Source: eMarketer.com
The reality is that, despite everything, the world is not ending; consumers will continue to buy but will increasingly do that digitally. Coronavirus has forced the purchasing habits of consumers towards a process of digitization. Today, users are more reassured to purchase their products online and no longer fearful as in the past decade.
So, we are going to analyze some new consumer online behaviors that are characterizing the current Covid era:
- Users are more likely to buy from brands they can trust. The relationship between brand and consumers often starts on Social Media channels and terminates with a purchase on the company website.
- Mobile users are often young and claim to have fast delivery in less than 48 hours nationwide, with online purchase assistance available practically 24 / hr.
- In a recent study on 46,000 shoppers, 73% declared to use multiple channels when shopping online.
- To the question: "How often do you buy products using the smart assistant?" 15% of people have used intelligent assistants for their online shopping.
- Online users are increasingly using their mobile to purchase online. 79% of smartphone users have bought online using their mobile devices in the last six months.
These are just some of the new exciting switches in the behaviors of online users. More attention should focus on changes in the habits of the consumers with the hot trends in the eCommerce market. Let's see some of them together:
- Voice Commerce: The growth in the use of voice systems for the digital market is visible to us. Systems like Google Home and Amazon Alexa will increasingly be part of our homes, and buying online via voice command will become a routine between now and the next 5-10 years.
- Live Shopping Experience: The streaming eCommerce or live selling phenomenon exploded during the pandemic when influencers started to stream about new products for their sponsored brands. According to Coresight, this kind of shopping generated US$60 billion in global sales in 2019 and should almost double this year.
- VR/AR: Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality applied to the e-commerce sectors are booming after the pandemic took over. These two technologies can allow users, for example, to virtually go touring in a shop through their website or reproducing one of their products with accurate sizes in their physical space.
- AI: Artificial Intelligence in the eCommerce market is already a big topic among marketers. They are now taking advantage of Dynamic Feeds to show the users the most relevant content in their web pages depending on the user preferences.
- Pricing Automation for Ecommerce: The so-called Dynamic Pricing technology allows eCommerce directors to take a lifetime break from routine pricing adjustments on their web stores. This feature is a game-changer for e-commerce that wants to remain ahead of the competition by automating its pricing strategy. Software like PriceTweakers are proven to help shop owners to save time and increase their margin profits.
In conclusion, although the historical period we are experiencing is difficult and dramatic, the online market can represent a point of salvation for the global economy and bring great satisfaction to digital market insiders.
SOURCES:
https://www.sellersnap.io/future-of-ecommerce-2021-trends/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/379046/worldwide-retail-e-commerce-sales/
https://blog.shift4shop.com/future-of-ecommerce-2021
https://kinsta.com/blog/ecommerce-statistics/
https://modernretail.co.uk/the-future-of-ecommerce-9-trends-to-watch-out-for-in-2021/
https://www.zdnet.com/article/three-ecommerce-predictions-for-2021/
https://beeketing.com/blog/future-ecommerce-2019/
Share this page