Despite a challenging year for retail in 2020, we estimate that worldwide retail ecommerce sales posted a 27.6% growth rate for the year, with sales reaching well over $4 trillion. This represents a substantial uptick from our mid-pandemic assessment that global ecommerce would decelerate to 16.5% growth and demonstrates the remarkable extent to which consumers transitioned to ecommerce last year.

Faced with a global pandemic, consumers leaned into certainty. Forty percent of shoppers said materials and craftsmanship earned their confidence in a brand.

From the onset of the pandemic, US consumers have shifted to ecommerce for essential goods and personal care products, which is keeping consumer packaged goods (CPG) digital ad spending afloat. Curated by eMarketer, this collection of insights and interviews will help you understand how CPG marketers are facing the challenges in this industry today. Download this complimentary Roundup “Industry Insights: CPGs Speak Out.”

India’s painful and ongoing struggle with the coronavirus pandemic will lead to a second consecutive difficult year for brick-and-mortar retail sales. At the same time, the public health anxieties constraining overall retail will continue pushing consumers toward digital solutions. We anticipate an extended boom for ecommerce in India, including 27.0% growth this year, for $66.76 billion in sales.

Retail sales for the 2021 US holiday season will soar as brick-and-mortar shopping returns with a vengeance and ecommerce maintains double-digit growth rates.

COVID-19 is back at the top of mind for many consumers: Survey suggests spread of omicron variant has led many to change their behavior.

However, with more stores closing due to omicron, even the most enthusiastic shoppers may find it more difficult to shop in-store for a while.

A promising retail avenue: For marketers struggling to find new digital buyers in China, livestreaming opens the door to shoppers who crave in-store experiences amid the pandemic.

The past 18 months have been a whirlwind in retail, with consumers adapting to technology at a faster clip and retailers looking to bridge the gap between online and in-store. However, total retail sales will dip slightly in the new year before returning to pre-pandemic levels in 2023 and beyond.

Kate Lubenesky: As an omnichannel brand, we don't just do direct to consumer, but we also partner with a lot of retail partners and other brands who have physical stores or pop-up experiences or coffee shops. During COVID, we had to shift to D2C, which was a luxury in that it allowed us to focus on that singularly.

During the pandemic-induced lockdowns in 2020, many UK-based shoppers confined to their homes saw little need to shop for apparel, and even now, as restrictions ease, apparel will still not be a consumer focus.

Recent research has found that the stringent lockdown in France has boosted ecommerce dramatically as consumers make fewer in-store trips.

TikTok could be the savior of the box office and travel counter: Pandemic-challenged industries have embraced the social media app in the hopes of fueling their recovery.

If retail ecommerce was boosting overall retail growth over the past decade, the pandemic added rocket fuel to surge it ahead by many years.

That opportunity is now bigger than ever: A flood of SMBs turned to payfacs as the pandemic forced retailers—especially smaller ones—to quickly ramp up ecommerce operations. The pandemic triggered a massive shift to ecommerce amid physical store closures and lingering consumer wariness about shopping indoors.