eCommerce Forecast – Global Market Comparison

Several eCommerce business models have boomed in the first half of 2020 thanks to a fundamental change in consumer behavior as a consequence of the corona pandemic lockdown measures. Although the surge in orders that many online players experienced in the first weeks after the coronavirus outbreak has widely leveled off by now, and some segments even experienced a downturn, the Statista Digital Market Outlook currently expects global eCommerce as a whole to grow by an additional 2% in 2020. Some of the segments are expected to experience an even greater boost, above all the category Food & Personal Care with a plus of over 10% on top of the pre-corona growth forecast.

Now that the situation slowly seems to settle, the moment might be opportune to look at global eCommerce market figures and get an idea of how the dominant regional markets China, Europe, and the U.S. generally present themselves in terms of online retail:

When comparing the three most important regional markets, it becomes obvious that China generated by far the highest eCommerce revenues in 2019, namely US$862.6 billion.

Europe and the U.S. lag far behind with not even half of China’s eCommerce revenue each. With revenues of US$353.6 billion and US$356.4, respectively, Europe and the U.S. are very close together in terms of eCommerce market size. With a forecast annual growth rate of 6.6% between 2019 and 2024, the U.S. is expected to increase its revenues in the eCommerce market slowest, followed by Europe with a CAGR1 of 7.6% in the same period.

China beats the two by far also in terms of growth: eCommerce revenues in the world’s second largest economy are expected to grow by an average of 11.2% each year from 2019 to 2024. Thus, as of June 2020, with the current corona fallout already taken into account, the Statista Digital Market Outlook expects Chinese eCommerce revenues in 2024 to amount to US$1.47 trillion. This would be almost exactly three times the 2024 U.S. market size of US$490.9 billion.

Taken together, the rest of the world beats the Chinese growth rate slightly with an expected CAGR of 11.8%. In terms of market size, however, all other countries taken together don’t make up half of China’s eCommerce revenue, either. With 2019 revenues of US$362.6 billion, they surpass the U.S. and Europe’s market size only slightly.

1: CAGR: Compound Annual Growth Rate / average growth rate per year

2: Only including countries covered by Statista Digital Market Outlook (150 in total)