A new publication by Germany-based secondary market research company yStats.com, “Top 8 Global B2C E-Commerce Country Sales Forecasts: 2015 to 2018”, reports that the world’s leading online retail markets are expected to experience further growth in the next several years, but at different rates. The combined share of the top 8 is predicted to still account for over three quarters of the global B2C E-Commerce market.
B2C E-Commerce sales generated by the eight leading markets: the USA, China, the UK, Japan, Germany, France, South Korea and Russia, ranked in that order, are predicted to grow at different rates, ranging from high one-digit numbers to moderate double-digit numbers in annual percentage change by 2018. The two emerging markets within this rank, China and Russia, predictably outpace their advanced counterparts in terms of growth rate. Overall, though sales growth is a common trend expected across all eight markets, each country’s share of total global B2C E-Commerce sales is predicted to decrease, with a notable exception of China. Due to the increasing share of China, however, the top 8 countries combined are predicted to retain their vast share of global sales, reaching over three quarters.
China and the USA battle for leadership in terms of sales volume. Forecasts indicate that US B2C E-Commerce sales will still top those of China over the span of the next few years, excluding C2C. However, when B2C and C2C are considered together, China clearly outpaces the USA in online retail sales. The UK and South Korea achieved the first and second rank based on a different criterion: these markets are predicted to have the highest B2C E-Commerce penetration on domestic retail sales, with values already in two-digit ranges.
Diverse as the markets are, there are some visible common trends, including the growing significance of M-Commerce and cross-border online shopping, as well as the rise of the seamless shopping experience across channels. There are also some similarities among the top market players: for example, global online merchant Amazon ranks high in at least half of the investigated top markets. However, there are also some other companies with international reach among the major market players, including the Otto Group, Tesco and Cdiscount, as well as local companies with significant shares of the domestic markets of the top eight countries, such as SK Planet, Ulmart or JD.com.
