Despite a challenging year for retail in 2020, we estimate that worldwide retail ecommerce sales posted a 27.6% growth rate for the year, with sales reaching well over $4 trillion. This represents a substantial uptick from our mid-pandemic assessment that global ecommerce would decelerate to 16.5% growth and demonstrates the remarkable extent to which consumers transitioned to ecommerce last year.
Pandemic accelerates livestreaming growth in China: The format will grow rapidly at 10.6% in 2021, driven by social apps and ecommerce livestreams.
Many social media platforms have started making measurable gains in social commerce, but according to a June 2020 Bizrate Insights survey conducted for eMarketer, there’s still a ways to go.
US shoppers are buying more internationally. Less than a third of US digital shoppers made a cross-border purchase last year, but that number is growing steadily as marketplaces like Amazon make international commerce more accessible.