U.S. e-commerce market growth slowed down during the 2021 holiday season

Recently, Mastercard released a holiday sales report . The report mentioned that from November 1 to December 24 this year , sales in the US e-commerce market increased by 11% year - on-year compared with the same period in 2020. However, the year-on- year growth rate of sales in the 2020 holiday season compared with 2019 was 47.2%.

In the 2021 holiday season, e-commerce sales in the U.S. accounted for 20.9% of total retail sales, slightly higher than 20.6 % in 2020. In contrast, e-commerce sales accounted for only 14.6% of total retail sales in the 2019 holiday season .

There is no doubt that the epidemic has promoted the business development of the global online e-commerce market, including the US market. However, as the epidemic situation gradually improves and offline stores reopen, the growth momentum of the online e-commerce market has weakened , and the rapid growth trend has slowed down.

According to adjusted statistics released by the U.S. Department of Commerce on November 18 , U.S. e-commerce sales in the third quarter of 2021 were US$214.6 billion, a year-on-year increase of 6.6%, but far lower than the year-on-year growth of 36.1% in the same period of 2020 .

At the same time, the share of e -commerce in total retail sales gradually declined from 13.8% in the third quarter of 2020 to 13 % in the third quarter of 2021.

Despite this, according to a report by Mastercard, the growth rate of e-commerce sales in the US market during the 2021 holiday season was still higher than the 8.1% growth rate of offline physical store retail sales .

Since the outbreak, the rapid development of online business has allowed people working from home to experience the convenience and comfort of shopping in bed, and new shopping habits have been formed. Although the reopening of offline physical stores will affect the sales of online e-commerce to a certain extent, the future will be a situation of coexistence and competition between online and offline.

In addition, with the emergence of the Omicron variant, the number of new daily cases in the UK, France, and the US has soared again, and the government may re-impose a blockade. In this case, the online e-commerce business in these countries and regions is bound to develop again.

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