Weekly Updates
Weekly Updates
- As the pandemic struck in 2020, consumers across the major economies learned to love online retail. With fear of the virus preventing people from shopping in person, the online share of retail sales suddenly surged.
- As restrictions have lifted and fear levels have fallen, the share of consumer spending online has declined. The UK is perhaps the most extreme example, where the online retail share has fallen from over 37% to just over 25% of total sales. However, this does not mean that consumers are giving up online shopping.
- Online retail was increasing market share before the pandemic. Across major economies, current online retail sales are broadly in line with or slightly above pre-pandemic growth trends. But even this may understate the increased willingness to shop online.
- Inflation is skewing retail values. Food prices are generally rising more rapidly than other goods prices, for instance. The share of food bought online is significantly less than the online share of many other goods. Food therefore inflates the value of offline sales relative to online sales. The recent price disinflation and deflation of some consumer durable goods has a similar effect, reducing the value of online sales relative to offline sales. Online retail seems well established.
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