Argentina’s ecommerce market has reached the stage when consumers—especially the younger demographics—are beginning to incorporate online shopping into their everyday lives, but there’s still a lot of work to be done to push wider adoption. eMarketer’s Matteo Ceurvels spoke with four local experts about what’s driving the growth of ecommerce and how retailers can do their part to bring shopping into the future. These interviews were conducted as part of our August report, “Latin America Ecommerce 2018: Digital Buyer Trends for Argentina, Brazil and Mexico.”
The professionalization of companies and entrepreneurs is a great challenge for those who want to surf the waves of Argentina’s new digital commerce revolution. But above all else, they must first learn to master the concept of omnicommerce—it has been a good practice that has allowed many companies to generate a positive online shopping experience for their customers over the past 15 years.
The main reason why consumers don’t buy online today is simply because they prefer to do so in person. The physical store gives them a sense of closeness that online shopping will never replace.
Logistics are one of the biggest challenges the region needs to solve. That’s why retailers and ecommerce companies have been developing strategies to help lower shipping costs. Otherwise, they end up costing the same as the product itself.
It’s very expensive to mail something in Argentina. For example, last week I bought a book online on MercadoLibre for ARS$300 [about $18], and the shipping fees came out to ARS$350 [about $21].”