Retail & Ecommerce

The unprecedented social and economic disruptions that affected all areas of life in the US in 2020 also skewed many of our pre-pandemic forecasts. Valuable insights can be gleaned by examining the difference between what we thought would happen as of February 2020 versus what we now project for this year and the coming years.

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.