Rapid development under the global e-commerce epidemic

The 2022 e-commerce week of the United Nations Conference on Trade and development was held in Geneva from April 25 to 29. The impact of the COVID-19 on digital transformation and how e-commerce and related digital technologies can promote recovery became the focus of this meeting. The latest data show that despite the relaxation of restrictions in many countries, the rapid development of consumer e-commerce activities continued to grow significantly in 2021, with a significant increase in online sales.
In 66 countries and regions with statistical data, the proportion of online shopping among Internet users increased from 53% before the epidemic (2019) to 60% after the epidemic (2020-2021). However, the extent to which the epidemic has led to the rapid development of online shopping varies from country to country. Before the epidemic, the level of online shopping in many developed countries was relatively high (more than 50% of Internet users), while the penetration rate of consumer e-commerce in most developing countries was low.
E-commerce in developing countries is accelerating. In the UAE, the proportion of Internet users who shop online has more than doubled, from 27% in 2019 to 63% in 2020; In Bahrain, this proportion has tripled to 45% by 2020; In Uzbekistan, this proportion increased from 4% in 2018 to 11% in 2020; Thailand, which had a high penetration rate of consumer e-commerce before the COVID-19, increased by 16%, which means that by 2020, more than half of the country's Internet users (56%) will be shopping online for the first time.

Data show that among European countries, Greece (up 18%), Ireland, Hungary and Romania (up 15% each) had the largest growth. One reason for this difference is that there are great differences in the degree of digitization among countries, as well as in the ability to quickly turn to digital technology to reduce economic chaos. Least developed countries in particular need support in developing e-commerce.

Official statistics from China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, South Korea, Australia and Singapore (accounting for about half of the world's GDP) show that online retail sales in these countries have increased significantly from about $2 trillion before the epidemic (2019) to $25000 billion in 2020 and $2.9 trillion in 2021. Throughout these countries, although the damage caused by the epidemic and economic uncertainty have restrained the growth of overall retail sales, with people increasing online shopping, online retail sales have increased strongly, and its share in total retail sales has increased significantly, from 16% in 2019 to 19% in 2020. Although offline sales began to pick up later, the growth of online retail sales continued until 2021. The share of online sales in total retail sales in China (about a quarter in 2021) is much higher than that in the United States (about an eighth).
According to the data of the United Nations Conference on Trade and development, the income of 13 top consumer centered e-commerce enterprises, including Alibaba, Amazon, jd.com and pinduoduo, increased significantly during the epidemic. In 2019, the total sales of these companies were $2.4 trillion. After the outbreak in 2020, this figure rose to $2.9 trillion, and then increased by a further third in 2021, bringing total sales to $3.9 trillion (at current prices).
The increase of online shopping has further consolidated the market concentration of already strong enterprises in online retail and market business. The revenue of Alibaba, Amazon, jd.com and pinduoduo increased by 70% from 2019 to 2021, and their share in the total sales of these 13 platforms increased from about 75% from 2018 to 2019 to more than 80% from 2020 to 2021.