The "epidemic economy" boosted the cooling! The growth rate of offline retail in the United States exceeded that of e-commerce for the first time!

It is learned that according to the data of the Ministry of Commerce, the penetration rate of e-commerce in the United States reached 13.2% in 2021. Although online sales increased from US$762 billion to US$870 billion, its penetration rate was still lower than 13.6% in 2020. In addition, offline retail sales increased by 17.9% year-on-year to US$6.6 trillion. This is also the first time in the history of the United States that the growth rate of offline retail has exceeded that of e-commerce.

Experts attribute this historic surpassing to the cooling of the boost to the e-commerce market caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2020 pandemic caused a large number of physical stores to close, driving explosive growth in e-commerce. This growth looks like a step-change, and the U.S. e-commerce penetration rate is now returning to normal levels in more than a decade.

If the epidemic had not broken out, the U.S. e-commerce sales in 2021 might have reached $762 billion and continued the 10-year growth trend of 14.8%. However, after the epidemic, the U.S. e-commerce market has grown more than four times in the past decade - from $200 billion in 2011 to $870 billion in 2021, which is equivalent to the epidemic speeding up its development by one year.

The coronavirus has not become a watershed for the e-commerce market like SARS in 2003, because in the United States (and most other Western countries), e-commerce provides convenience for most consumers, but this is only a matter of preference, not rigid demand. This is why the scale of US e-commerce will expand a little bit every year, but it will not reach China's 50% market share soon.

Editor✎Irene/

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