Global E-Commerce Sales Rise to $25.6trn in 2018

• Global E-Commerce Sales Rise to $25.6trn in 2018 ― UNCTAD

More consumers are embracing online shopping, according to the latest report from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

In the report released at the start of UNCTAD’s E-Week event on Monday, global e-commerce sales rose by 8 percent from $23.8 trillion recorded in 2017 to $25.6 trillion in 2018.

The digital e-Week event, which will run from 27 April to 1 May, will feature dialogues on the sector recovery from COVID-19 pandemic among ministers, heads of international organisa­tions, business executives and civil society representatives.

The report shows the total sales recorded in 2018 in the e-commerce sector — includes business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) sales — was equivalent to 30 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP) in 2018.

Shamika Sirimanne, UNCTAD’s director of technology and logistics, said: “The coronavirus crisis has accelerated the uptake of digital solutions, tools and services, but the overall impact on the value of e-commerce in 2020 is still hard to predict.”

A breakdown of the report shows that the value of global B2B e-commerce stood at $21 trillion, accounting for 83 percent of the entire e-commerce (both online market platforms and electronic data interchange transactions) in 2018.

Accordingly, the B2C e-commerce subsector was valued at $4.4 trillion, 16 percent from 2017. While cross-border B2C e-commerce sales increased by 7 percent to $404 billion in 2018.

The United States of America dominated the overall e-commerce market as it remained among the top three countries by B2C e-commerce sales, alongside China and the United Kingdom.

The leading B2C e-commerce companies are based mostly in China and the United States. The world’s top 10 B2C companies in 2018 generated almost $2 trillion in gross merchandise value (GMV), according to the report.