As the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage, online retail has boomed with global sales topping $26 trillion in 2020, according to estimates by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
Online retail jumped from 16% to 19% of total retail last year, according to UNCTAD calculations published on Monday, while global e-commerce increased by 4% for sales of $26.7 trillion, more than the gross domestic product of the United States, the world's biggest economy.
Ten of the top 13 e-commerce firms are from China or the United States, with Alibaba topping the list ahead of Amazon, and Canada's Shopify the highest-ranked from a third country at five.
While the share of online sales across the world's major economies grew, as on-off lockdowns forced people to spend large chunks of time indoors, UNCTAD said there had been a "notable reversal of fortunes for platform companies offering services such as ride-hailing and travel."
Shares of retail done online in China and South Korea surged to almost a quarter of the totals, with Britain close behind after a jump from 15.8% in 2019 to 23.3% last year.
Online sales in the U.S., whose e-commerce firms last year recorded sales worth over one-third of the global total, increased from 11% to 14% of national retail.
The 2020 online business boom came amid what UNCTAD earlier said was the sharpest annual drop in global economic output since record-keeping was started in the 1940s.
Please click to read our informative text prepared pursuant to the Law on the Protection of Personal Data No. 6698 and to get information about the cookies used on our website in accordance with the relevant legislation.
6698 sayılı Kişisel Verilerin Korunması Kanunu uyarınca hazırlanmış aydınlatma metnimizi okumak ve sitemizde ilgili mevzuata uygun olarak kullanılan çerezlerle ilgili bilgi almak için lütfen tıklayınız.