US online sales will reach $794.50 billion this year, up 32.4% year-over-year and accounting for 14.4% of all retail spending.
That’s according to eMarketer’s third-quarter forecast, which also predicts that e-commerce sales will reach 19.2% of all US retail spending by 2024. The increase for 2020 is much higher than the 18.0% gain predicted in the company’s second-quarter forecast as consumers continue to opt for online shopping amid the pandemic.
Online shopping is so strong that it will more than offset the 3.2% decline in brick-and-mortar spending this year, which will drop to $4.711 trillion, reported eMarketer. As a result, total US retail sales will remain essentially flat.
“We’ve seen e-commerce accelerate in ways that didn’t seem possible last spring, given the extent of the economic crisis,” said Andrew Lipsman, eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence. “While much of the shift has been led by essential categories like grocery, there has been surprising strength in discretionary categories like consumer electronics and home furnishings that benefited from pandemic-driven lifestyle needs.”
As the entire e-commerce market expands, so too will the shares of the top 10 e-commerce players (see list at end of article), accounting for 63.2% of all online sales this year, according to eMarketer. This is up from 57.9% in 2019. Key findings related to the top 10 companies are… Chain Store Age
