5 feb 2015
Latin American B2C e-commerce market expected to have reached $39.3 billion in 2014
By: Roman Kondrashov
With a total B2C e-commerce turnover of $33.2bn in 2013, Latin America is the fourth-strongest e-commerce region in the world, behind Asia-Pacific ($567.3bn),Europe ($482.3bn) and North America ($452.4bn). In comparison with 2012, the Latin American B2C e-commerce turnover grew by 21.5%, which is higher than the growth rates of Europe (17.1%) and North America (10.1%). However, it is lower than those of Asia-Pacific (44.6%) and Middle East and North Africa (MENA, 32.7%). The high growth rate of Latin American B2C e-commerce turnover shows that this region is still an emerging e-commerce market, which is also evidenced by the estimated growth rate of 18.4% in 2014.
Figures in the Ecommerce Foundation reports are based on the Global Online Measurement Standard for E-commerce (GOMSEC). The European e-commerce figures were established in cooperation with national e-commerce associations and GfK.
Online sales in Latin America expected to have reached $39.3 billion in 2014
The Latin America region, including Argentina, Brazil and Chile, made up 2.2% of the global B2C e-commerce market in 2013, which is practically the same share as in the preceding year. For 2014, Latin America’s online sales are estimated to have reached $39.3 billion, which represents a share of 2.0% of the global B2C e-commerce turnover. Even though Latin America is an emerging market itself, it probably lost some market share to the faster growing Asian-Pacific market.
Chile on the rise
Brazil is clearly the largest e-commerce market of Latin America. In fact, it makes up for 55.9% of the entire Latin American B2C e-commerce market. It is followed by Argentina (11.1%) and Chile (9.8%). However, it is expected that Chile surpassed Argentina in 2014 in terms of B2C e-commerce turnover (Chile: $4.3bn and Argentina: $4.1bn).
Chilean B2C e-commerce sales are estimated to have increased by 34.2% last year and even though the growth rates of Brazil (12.6%) and Argentina (11.2) were still significant, they were clearly lower than in Chile.
On average, Latin American e-shoppers spent $629 online in 2013
Ecommerce Europe’s research reveals that 69.9 million consumers in Latin America bought goods and services online in 2013. On average, Latin American online consumers each spent $629 online in 2013. This is considerably lower than the global average of $1,304. At $662, Chile is clearly leading the way in the region, followed by Brazil ($513) and Argentina ($314).
In terms of Internet penetration, the Latin American average of 55.5% in 2013 was lower than the global average (64.0%). Within the region, Chile was again in the lead with 66.5% of its population being connected to the Internet. Argentina ranked second with 59.9% and Brazil third with 51.6%.
In addition to this Latin American B2C E-commerce Report and the previously published Global and North America B2C E-commerce reports, the Ecommerce Foundation will publish three other regional reports in the upcoming period. These will cover Asia-Pacific, Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and the major emerging countries Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC). The reports are powered by GlobalCollect, Informatica, RichRelevance and Salesupply.