A new report by Germany-based secondary market research specialist yStats.com unveils the growing online retail market in Latin America. The publication, titled “Latin America B2C E-Commerce Market 2016”, features country rankings, sales forecasts and information about the preferences of online shoppers in this region. Furthermore, the report highlights that Latin America’s online retail potential goes beyond the region’s largest market Brazil and remains high in smaller, but faster growing countries.
Latin America’s B2C E-Commerce market is one of the smallest worldwide in terms of sales, the new report by yStats.com reveals. Online retail is only starting to evolve across this region and accounted for a tiny share of overall retail sales in 2015. This signals a great potential for further development. In the near future, B2C E-Commerce sales in Latin America are predicted to maintain strong double-digit growth rates, spurred by Internet access, financial services and online shopper penetration rising across the region. Both local and international E-Commerce companies are competing for a larger share of this growing market, with Amazon launching full operations in Mexico in 2015 and Argentina-based marketplace operator MercadoLibre scoring high by number of website visitors in almost every major market of the region.
Brazil is Latin America’s leader in B2C E-Commerce sales, with multiple sources cited in yStats.com’s report ranking it high above other countries in terms of sales, number of online shoppers and online spending per shopper. However, even in Brazil online retail accounted for less than 5% of total retail sales in 2015 and is not expected to break this threshold in the next few years.
Argentina and Mexico are predicted to overtake Brazil in B2C E-Commerce sales growth. In 2015, Argentina was already the region’s strongest performer in terms of growth rate, with online retail rising by a high double-digit percentage share. Meanwhile, Mexico was ahead of other countries in Latin America in the adoption of major market trends including M-Commerce and cross-border online shopping, according to the findings revealed in yStats.com’s report.
Furthermore, Chile had the highest Internet and online shopper penetration in higher-income population groups in Latin America last year, though showing a significant discrepancy between rural and urban regions in online retail development. In Colombia, on the contrary, online shopper penetration among Internet users was very low, in the single-digit range, but improving. Another market to watch is Peru. Though currently accounting for less than 1% of the country’s total retail sales, B2C E-Commerce in Peru is likely to be spurred by the rising Internet penetration and a program for financial inclusion launched by the government in 2015.
