In 2017, B2C e-commerce sales did hit $2.3 trillion worldwide. B2B e-commerce, on the other hand, reached $7.7 trillion.
Each year we’re facing evolving of the e-commerce market.
Let’s stay updated and discuss what’s currently happening with online-Shopping and why it’ll soon embrace the whole world.
Local store vs online store (invisible competition)
Every day people buy some stuff online such as furniture, food, clothes etc. We still remember these days when you had to schedule the whole day once decided to go shopping. It indeed looked like a trip because firstly you decide what stores you want to visit and whether they still have stuff you want to check.
Moreover, do you remember that feeling when you have 2 items to compare in different stores located far from each other and want to choose only one?
No doubt, once you’re done with shopping sometimes you feel so tired as if you were hiking somewhere in mountains.
Fact: shopping used to be slow and required a lot of time.
That’s why competition has changed and having a fancy store with a beautiful showcase doesn’t mean people will buy from you even if it’s only one store in the neighborhood.
It’s interesting to note that, in today’s progressive world for some people getting out of the home in order to buy regular stuff like clothes or furniture looks funny or even a nightmare. For most, the first thought that comes to mind today is getting a laptop or a smartphone so that you will choose goods lying on the sofa at home having no troubles with bad weather or spending too much time getting to the store.
Quick note: Instead of horses people already drive a car. So why do you think shopping will stay in the old version?)
So what happened and why more and more people decide to buy online?
Reasons why people choose e-commerce
To begin with, for example, Amazon has better catalog than any other local store in the world and you can check it all from your laptop/smartphone. Basically, you can choose anything you want and it’ll be delivered directly to your house shortly.
Quick Fact: 64% of customers make purchases overseas
Having such a privilege, year by year interaction with customers changes for better and at some points looks even more suitable than with a human. The thing is AI technology which is extremely evolving these days encourages us to deal with online stores.
AR technology allows you to find out, for instance, how your new sofa, bedside table or bookshelf will look like inside your apartment. Great examples are eBay, IKEA, and Alibaba. These companies have already integrated AR into their business, which allows them to achieve impressive results. In fact, users 11 times more likely to buy the product and spend 3 times more time in your store using AR app rather than a standard one.
AI technology that allows you to chat with a bot that understands you and will assist all your moves. It’s worth mentioning that latest Google update impressed the public with its voice assistant. Having Artificial
Intelligence integrated allowed to improve assistant and now it’s able to communicate with you so that sometimes you won’t even recognize the difference between human and robot. Meaning it’s not just simple chatbot that’s able to assist you during shopping but robot that is able to talk to you. No auto-replies, you can ask robot as if it’s a real human just like in a regular local store.
Regions with e-commerce boom:
Despite the fact that billions of people shop online there are interesting statistics to be reviewed.
Here are top 3 largest e-commerce markets:
China: $672 billion
United States: $340 billion
United Kingdom: $99 billion
Countries with formed e-commerce market and stable year by year growth:
USA, UK, China, Japan, Australia, South Korea
Countries that already have a market and soon will experience a huge growth in terms of e-commerce:
India, Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Switzerland
Of course, people in countries that don’t have e-commerce market want the situation to be changed but it’s not always for them to have the final word.
The thing is that e-commerce usually comes together with e-government which definitely may destroy corruption. It’s not always necessarily the case for all countries but a good reason for some of them.
To sum up
50 years ago theater was fighting with television. Theater representatives considered that TV cannot be good enough to transfer the emotion and whole context to viewers.
Turns out TV and internet together with all new technologies are better in all aspects and as a result squeezed theater out of the market.
Despite the fact that E-commerce is comparatively a new approach evolving day by day it again proved the whole world that new technologies serve people and make things easy to use with better effect having all expectations met of course.
A local shop is a theater trying to fight with 3D movies!
Let’s say in touch with new trends and enjoy how e-commerce will soon change our lives.