(Drivebycuriosity) - Not long ago e-commerce was booming, thanks to Covid 19. The pandemic induced many people to stay at home and to shop online. Amazon, Shopify, Wayfair and other online sellers reported burgeoning sales and their shares rocketed.
But things have changed. Many people seem to ignore the virus and behave like they did before the pandemic. Recently, when Amazon, Shopify, Wayfair and Co. presented their numbers from Q4 2022, the holiday season quarter, they reported sharply lower growth rates and their stocks fell down to earth (images below). Did the Covid induced e-commerce boom come to an end?
Amazon:
Wayfair:
( source )
Unfortunately there are no official data for the US. The Americans publish data about baseball, football and other sport but not about Internet usage. Fortunately the British government publishes monthly numbers for "Internet sales as a percentage of total retail sales
" (Chart on top of this post gov.uk). The UK numbers could be used as an indication for US and global trends.
As you can see there was an upwards trend. From December 2006 till December 2019 the market share of internet sales climbed from about 3% to around 21%. E-commerce gained annually about 1.4 percent points on average. The pandemic accelerated the e-commerce growth and created something like a camels hump on the chart.
The image above this paragraph shows a shorter period. Apparently e-commerce advanced about 6 percent points since January 2020, shortly before Covid 19 spread around the world. That`s an annual market share gain of about 2%. It looks like the pandemic had an enduring effect and lifted the trend on a higher level - at least in the UK.
I don´t see a reason why American and continental European shoppers should behave very different. Walmart`s Q4 numbers, which include already January 2023, show a slight re-acceleration ( cnbc). I think the meltdown of the e-commerce stocks is an overreaction.
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