As e-commerce growth rates slow from historic highs, the online channel is no longer a rising tide for all categories and brands. While potential exists with e-commerce accounting for 50% of retail’s expected growth in the next five years, retailers and brands will have to become savvier as they search for the next opportunity. Learn how to capitalise on these pockets of growth.
This report comes in PPT.
Coming off pandemic highs, e-commerce growth is normalising. E-commerce will remain a dominant force. This shift to online is driving a structural shift in the industry that will redefine how the industry operates and establish new guidelines for what it will take to win.
The global economy will see a significant downturn in 2023 with inflation rates improving but still remaining higher than historical trends. Consumers and businesses continue to feel the squeeze of rising prices across all channels with e-commerce no longer immune to some of these wider economic forces.
With competition increasing in the online channels, retailers and brands must find ways to stand out. In more advanced e-commerce markets, e-commerce platforms are becoming more polished as retailers and brands deploy new tactics to reach and engage shoppers. Some of these new approaches focus on customising, elevating and gamifying the customer experience.
Although there are e-commerce growth opportunities across many markets, it is hard to deny the impact of China and the US. Each stands in its own right as an online behemoth as well as home to the e-commerce giants shaping this channel and the future of retail. More broadly, an economic power shift is underway, and e-commerce is no exception. E-commerce growth is increasingly being powered more by emerging markets with China playing an undeniable role.
Retail is the sale of new and used goods to consumers from a business for personal or household consumption from retail outlets, kiosks, market stalls, vending, direct selling and e-commerce. Retail is the aggregation of Retail Offline and Retail E-Commerce. Excludes specialist retailers of motor vehicles, motorcycles, vehicle parts. Also excludes fuel sales, foodservice sales, rental transactions, and wholesale sales (e.g. Cash and Carry). Sales value excluding or including VAT/Sales Tax. Retail also excludes the informal retail sector. Informal retailing is retail trade which is not declared to the tax authorities. Informal retailing encompasses (a) sales generated by unregistered and unlicensed retailers, i.e. retailers operating illegally, and (b) any proportion of sales generated by a registered and licensed retailer that is not declared to the tax authorities. Unregistered and unlicensed retailers operate predominantly (although not exclusively) as street hawkers or operate open market stalls, as these channels are harder for the authorities to monitor than permanent outlets. Activities in the illegal market, which is usually understood to refer to trade in illegal, counterfeit or stolen merchandise, are included within our definition of informal retailing. Activities in the “grey market”, which is usually understood to refer to trade in legal merchandise that is sold through unauthorized channels – for example cigarettes bought legally in another country, legally imported, but sold at lower prices than in authorized channels – will be included as informal retailing if no tax is paid on sale by the retailer. However if the retailer pays tax – for example on cigarettes bought legally in another country but sold at a lower price than standard – the sale is included within formal retail.
See All of Our DefinitionsIf you purchase a report that is updated in the next 60 days, we will send you the new edition and data extraction Free!