Retail & Ecommerce

More than half of digital buyers in Canada shopped outside the country this year, according to our first forecast of cross-border ecommerce for multiple countries. Almost 12 million digital buyers in Canada made purchases on non-Canadian sites in 2020, equal to more than half of digital buyers in the country and over a third of the population.

eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst Jasmine Enberg, and junior analyst at Insider Intelligence Blake Droesch discuss what they're paying attention to in 2021, and why: the rise of social entertainment, WhatsApp's next move, and stalling social commerce.

With a hard Brexit looming, 2020 will be the peak of cross-border ecommerce penetration in the UK, according to the latest forecast from eMarketer, an Insider Intelligence company. This year, 22.8 million people in the UK will have made a cross-border ecommerce purchase, representing 46.0% of internet users and 50.2% of digital buyers.

Latin American ecommerce giant Mercado Libre has benefitted immensely from the pandemic, as stay-at-home orders forced consumers to buy online. According to our inaugural forecast on Mercado Libre, the online marketplace’s sales will surge 46.5% in Latin America by the end of 2020, to $20.51 billion. And it still has room to grow in several key markets—even where it already dominates.