Can you imagine a world without online shopping? It has become so ever-present in our world. Not only can you online shop for daily necessities such as groceries, but you can figure out whether you want them delivered to your home or pick them up.
The level of flexibility is unmatched. There’s online shopping that allows you to ship items wherever you want and however you want, such as gifts to people (and even get them gift wrapped).
There’s online shopping that connects you with the biggest big boxes of them all and the smallest marketplaces, too.
But what does online shopping look like today and what will it look like in the future? That’s what retailers and economists everywhere want to know.
Take a look at sales only, for example. In one year, they totalled over $500 billion in America, and about $3 trillion across the globe.
And if you look at who is shopping online, the higher the income percentage the more likely they are to be shopping online. Even so, looking outside of income alone, eight in ten Americans bought something online at least once.
If you think about online shopping, it’s remarkable to realize that it’s just under three decades old. And in just a few more years, that $3 trillion is forecasted to be almost $5 trillion.
Although statistics from the United States feel pretty robust, there are nothing compared to China.
There, total online shopping is over $700 billion a year. But it’s an interesting statistic, because shopping from other countries as a part of online shopping is tremendous — well over half.
That would likely be bigger if some products weren’t prohibited, too. So what else does the global online shopping world look like? This infographic offers some interesting insights.