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Last Updated on March 7, 2021 by Work In My Pajamas
The bricks and mortar store has had its golden days. The attractiveness of such businesses has been declining gradually for years, and it’s looking like when we emerge from the current global pandemic, Main Street may change forever. Shopping, however, is more important than ever, and eCommerce is set to thrive.
Here’s why anybody looking forward in the world of B2C business should look to cyberspace.
Its Size
In 2019, global B2C eCommerce sales amounted to almost $3.5 trillion. If online shops banded together to form a country, that country would have the fifth largest economy in the world by nominal GDP – larger than India ($2.9 trillion) and the UK ($2.7 trillion). Sales that big do not indicate a passing trend but rather a way of life for the global population – buying products online simply does not look like it will go away. Between 2014 and 2019, there hasn’t been a growth rate of less than 20% each year.
Scratching the Surface
That $3.5 trillion barely scratches the surface of eCommerce potential, as eCommerce is not particularly well optimized to the emerging markets of India, China, Brazil, Russia, and South Africa. By 2022, 3 billion buyers from these countries will have access to the internet: an extraordinary number of additional customers that will feed the eCommerce machine. In 2022, 20% of all retail sales will come from buyers in emerging markets, meaning a golden age of eCommerce is about to be upon us.
Democratized Selling
eCommerce sites allow basically anybody to sell products online. With the popularity of pre-build shop architectures like Shopify and highly tailored user-experience-oriented services like those offered by this Magento London agency, the world of eCommerce may be a more democratizing field than physical shops, allowing anybody to compete in a landscape that is closer to real free-market capitalism than ever. However, this may dwindle in the upcoming decade as companies throw more and more money into SEO. It might soon be that securing a place on the SERP is as expensive as hiring a building in the center of town, but the internet offers plenty of different marketing avenues to help keep competition healthy.
Helping Businesses Thrive
If the neoliberalist era has shown us anything, it’s that what is good for businesses tends to drive future trends and developments. Remember that massive $3.5 trillion figure? B2B eCommerce was predicted to be almost double that by the end of the year, growing to a massive $6.6 trillion. If you combine B2B and B2C sales, the GDP of eCommerce amounts to $10.1 trillion, almost doubling the third-largest GDP in the world: Japan.
Automation
eCommerce profit growth will be massive in the upcoming decade with help from automation. Whether it’s by using robotics to make warehouse operations more efficient, or by using AI chatbots to allow a site to attend to as many users as possible, the eCommerce industry is set to be able to support a growing user base without getting impacted by the inefficiencies that are typically associated with tailoring to large numbers of customers.
