2021 US e-commerce market report is released! Amazon's market share exceeds 40%

It is learned that according to the latest report released by DigitalCommerce360, US consumers' online shopping spending in 2021 reached 871.03 billion US dollars, an increase of 14.2% from 762.68 billion US dollars in the previous year. At the same time, compared with the increase of 31.8% in 2020, this growth has gradually returned to the level before the epidemic.

According to the Ministry of Commerce, e-commerce sales grew by more than 30% for the fourth consecutive quarter in the first quarter of 2021, reaching 39.1%, which is still higher than the last pre-pandemic quarter of 2020. But since then, growth has slowed to single digits, at 9.2% in the second quarter and 6.8% in the third quarter.

DigitalCommerce360 estimates that U.S. e-commerce sales grew 9.4% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2021, with overall online holiday sales in the U.S. growing a more modest 10.0% from November to December.

The proportion of e-commerce sales in total retail sales tends to stabilize

Although online sales growth slowed and in-store shopping resumed as the epidemic eased, online shopping penetration remained the same as in 2021 as online and offline spending grew at roughly the same rate.

DigitalCommerce360 estimates that online sales as a share of total retail sales has been steadily increasing, with e-commerce penetration reaching 19.2% in 2021. This is essentially flat compared to 2020, up just 0.03 percentage points from 19.1% the year before.

Before the pandemic, no year had seen e-commerce sales increase by more than 2 percentage points from the year before. But driven by the pandemic, online sales’ share of total retail sales jumped 3.6 percentage points in 2020.

Amazon accounts for 42% of US e-commerce sales

Like many other retailers and the market as a whole, Amazon's online sales growth has slowed. But Amazon is still growing its share of the U.S. e-commerce market in 2021, ranking first among the top 1,000.

DigitalCommerce360 estimates that GMV (commonly referred to as gross merchandise value, or GMV) from third-party marketplace sellers on Amazon's platform that sell to U.S. consumers grew 17.3% to $364.38 billion last year from $310.57 billion in 2020. Meanwhile, online sales in the U.S. are estimated to have grown 14.2%.

Due to above-market growth, Amazon and its third-party sellers accounted for 41.8% of total U.S. online sales in 2021, compared to 40.7% in 2020. In addition, Amazon accounted for nearly half (49.7%) of all online shopping spending.

Editor ✎ Xiao Zhu/

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