A new market report from Hamburg-based secondary market research company yStats.com reveals key trends and prospects of online retail in Mexico. Among other findings, the publication “Mexico B2C E-Commerce Market 2017” cites a projection that Internet retail sales in Mexico are projected to grow faster than in Brazil or Argentina for the period leading up to 2021. According to yStats.com’s CEO and Founder, Yücel Yelken, “Smartphone usage by the young population is among the main factors encouraging the rise of B2C E-Commerce in the country”.
Mexico ranks second after Brazil and ahead of Argentina in Latin America’s B2C E-Commerce sales. Of these top three countries, Mexico is projected to see the fastest growth rate in online retail in the period from 2016 to 2021, according to a forecast cited in the yStats.com report. One of the main factors driving the growth of online shopping in Mexico is a favorable demographic profile of the country’s population, where young urbanized consumers account for a significant proportion. Furthermore, Internet penetration in Mexico has grown over the past several years to over 50% of the population, mainly due to the use of smartphones. More than three-quarters of Internet users went online via these devices in 2016, compared to less than one-half using desktop computers.
In online shopping, mobile devices also play an important role. According to a survey from early 2017, cited in this report by yStats.com, slightly below 50% of online shoppers in Mexico made their latest online purchase from a mobile device, either smartphone or tablet. Furthermore, mobile devices are increasingly used to conduct price comparison while shopping at a physical store. Overall, omnichannel activities such as comparing prices or products online before buying in store (“webrooming”) or browsing physical store offerings prior to making a purchase online (“showrooming”) significantly increased their reach of Mexico’s consumers in the past two years.
Another top trend in Mexico’s B2C E-Commerce is cross-border shopping. A double-digit share of online shoppers made purchases from foreign sellers in 2016, most popularly on U.S. and Asian websites. U.S.-based companies Amazon and Wal-Mart are also heavily investing in their local E-Commerce operations in Mexico, with Amazon having launched the Amazon Prime service in Mexico in 2017 and Wal-Mart planning to expand its fulfillment and logistics capabilities. Another top player is Argentina-based online marketplace MercadoLibre, which held the leading position in Mexican online retail in terms of market share as of 2016, according to research cited in the yStats.com report.
