“The coronavirus crisis has accelerated the adoption of digital solutions, tools and services, but the overall impact on the value of e-commerce in 2020 is still difficult to predict,” said Shamika Sirimanne, director of technology and logistics at UNCTAD.
The value of global e-commerce in 2017 was estimated at $23.8 trillion based on a revised methodology.
Top Countries in Ecommerce Sales
The value of global B2B e-commerce in 2018 was US$21 trillion, accounting for 83% of all e-commerce and including both sales on online marketplace platforms and electronic data exchange transactions.
B2C e-commerce was valued at $4.4 trillion, up 16% from 2017. Cross-border B2C e-commerce sales were $404 billion in 2018, a 7% increase from 2017.
The United States continued to dominate the overall e-commerce market (Table 1). It remained in the top 3 countries by B2C e-commerce sales alongside China and the UK.
Table 1: Ecommerce Revenue: Top Ten Economies 2018
Source: UNCTAD, based on national sources.
Note: Numbers in italics are UNCTAD estimates.
The leading B2C e-commerce companies are mainly based in China and the United States. According to the report, the world’s 10 largest B2C companies generated nearly $2 trillion in gross merchandise value (GMV) in 2018.
Alibaba (China) led the way with GMV of $866 billion in 2018, followed by Amazon (US) at $277 billion. However, in terms of sales, JD.com (China) and Amazon were ahead of Alibaba.
Developing and emerging markets accounted for about half of the top 20 economies by B2C e-commerce sales. Relative to GDP, B2C e-commerce in these economies was largest in Hong Kong-China, China and the United Kingdom and smallest in India, Brazil and Russia.
The extent to which Internet users make online purchases varies significantly among the top 20 economies. For example, in 2018, 87% of internet users in the UK shopped online, compared to just 14% in Thailand and 11% in India.
More than 1.4 billion people have shopped online and more have shopped abroad
UNCTAD estimates that 1.45 billion people, or a quarter of the world’s population aged 15 and over, shopped online in 2018 (Figure 1). That is 9% more than in 2017.
According to the report, China had the largest number of online shoppers at 610 million. While the majority of online shoppers mainly bought from domestic providers, around 330 million online shoppers made cross-border purchases in 2018 – slightly more than one in five of all online shoppers.
Interest in buying from foreign suppliers continued to grow. The share of cross-border online shoppers in all online shoppers increased from 17% in 2016 to 23% in 2018.
“Nonetheless, the number of online shoppers, while huge, is an indication of the magnitude of the digital divide and the future market potential of e-commerce, both of which need to be addressed,” added Ms. Sirimanne.
Today, only half of the world’s 7.7 billion people are connected to the Internet and its benefits. This limits the possibilities of many developing countries to use digital solutions to deal with the current health and economic crisis.
Figure 1. Global online shoppers (millions), 2016-2018
Source: UNCTAD, based on national data
New methodology
Measuring the value of e-commerce remains a challenge as most countries still do not publish official statistics on it, although more and more governments are collecting information.
Also, countries that publish data on the value of e-commerce sometimes don’t follow international guidelines and often revise their statistics.
To reflect recent developments, UNCTAD has adjusted its methodology for estimating global e-commerce.
Due to the changes in methodology as well as country revisions of their data for 2017, the latest e-commerce estimates are not directly comparable to those published by UNCTAD in previous years.
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