Record-breaking! Global holiday sales to exceed $1.2 trillion

Compared with the historic growth in the e-commerce sector in 2020, the growth of online sales this year is relatively modest . However, the online shopping habits formed by consumers during the epidemic continue to exist, and consumers' shopping demand continues to grow . These factors may drive sales to a record high during this year's holiday shopping season .

Salesforce 's latest data predicts that despite rising product costs and inventory shortages during the holiday season , global e-commerce sales will continue to grow during the 2021 holiday season. Global e-commerce is expected to grow 7% year-on-year in November and December this year.

Specifically, Salesforce predicts that total global e-commerce sales for the 2021 holiday season will reach a record $1.2 trillion , with the U.S. reaching $259 billion . Salesforce said that the number of online orders will decline slightly during the holidays , and rising product prices are an important reason for the record high online sales in 2021 .

Salesforce believes that the main reasons for the increase in product costs include reduced manufacturing capacity in the retail industry, increased logistics costs and labor shortages . Therefore , retailers will face an additional cost of approximately $223 billion in merchandise sales during this holiday season. Taking into account the increase in costs and inflation, Salesforce expects product prices to rise by about 20% during the holiday season and beyond.

As product prices rise , Salesforce also expects the use of buy now, pay later payment methods to increase , with global buy now , pay later orders accounting for 8% of total holiday online orders during the holiday season, up from 4% in the 2020 holiday season.

In order to buy the products they want , consumers may start shopping early this holiday shopping season . Salesforce expects online sales in the United States to grow 6% to $29 billion in the week before Christmas , and global online sales to grow 3% to $129 billion.

In terms of marketing methods , Salesforce is more optimistic about social e-commerce . Salesforce expects that e -commerce traffic from social recommendations during this year's holiday season will increase by 30% compared to the 2020 holiday shopping season, while traffic from email marketing will increase by 18%.

Overall , the overall outlook for this year's holiday shopping season is promising , but a series of problems such as rising costs and supply chain crises will still exist. Sellers must also prepare in advance and manage inventory well to win the battle for the second half of the year's peak sales season!

Holiday Shopping Season

E-commerce