“As a result, we’re going to see considerably higher ecommerce penetration rates across almost all retail categories post-pandemic.”. Not sure if your company subscribes? You can find out here.

Ecommerce adoption has been growing rapidly in recent years, and in some advanced economies (as well as in China) ecommerce penetration could be approaching the saturation point among internet users. Thus, the surge in ecommerce generated by the pandemic served mainly to keep user growth rates from declining, rather than drive an unexpected acceleration.

When excluding gas and auto sales (categories sold almost exclusively offline), ecommerce penetration jumps to 20.6%. “There will be some lasting impacts from the pandemic that will fundamentally change how people shop,” said Cindy Liu, eMarketer senior forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence. “For one, many stores, particularly department stores, may close permanently.

Another way of looking at ecommerce penetration is to calculate it as a percentage of total retail, excluding gas and auto category sales from the denominator, since these categories (outside of some auto parts and a negligible percentage of auto sales) are almost exclusively purchased offline.

“As a result, we’re going to see considerably higher ecommerce penetration rates across almost all retail categories post-pandemic.”. In-store grocery sales reached record levels as cooking at home increased due to the restrictions on eating out. Grocery sales spiked in late March and early April, according to Statistics Canada.

Individual categories’ ecommerce penetration varies widely from these benchmarks. Books/music/video will be the most highly penetrated ecommerce category with 62.7% of total category sales coming from digital channels, becoming the first category to achieve an ecommerce majority.

“The retailers most at risk will be those who have a high percentage of ecommerce penetration and a low average order value (AOV),” wrote retail analyst Richard Kestenbaum in an August 2020 Forbes article. “Those are the ones that have the highest shipping cost as a percent of value of products purchased.”. Marketing Strategies for Holiday Success.

“Longer term, there will be increases in return volume as ecommerce penetration increases, even if overall retail sales slow down,” she said. “We know online retailers have return rates of four to six times that of brick-and-mortar.”. Steven Dennis, president and founder of SageBerry Consulting, however, suspects that things will largely revert to normal once the pandemic begins to subside.

The global ecommerce market will rise more than 20% in 2019, despite mounting economic uncertainty and declining consumer spending growth around the world.