The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development held E-Commerce Week 2022 in Geneva from April 25 to 29. The event focused on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on digital transformation and on how e-commerce and related digital technologies could support recovery. The latest figures showed that consumer e-commerce continued to grow significantly in 2021, with a substantial increase in online sales, even as many countries eased restrictions.

Across the 66 countries and territories with available data, the proportion of internet users shopping online rose from 53% before the pandemic in 2019 to 60% in 2020–2021. The scale of this growth varied by country. Before the pandemic, online shopping was already relatively widespread in many developed countries, reaching more than half of internet users, while adoption was lower in most developing countries.

E-commerce was accelerating in developing countries. In the United Arab Emirates, the share of internet users shopping online more than doubled from 27% in 2019 to 63% in 2020. In Bahrain, it tripled to 45% in 2020. In Uzbekistan, it rose from 4% in 2018 to 11% in 2020. Thailand, where consumer e-commerce adoption was already relatively high before the pandemic, recorded an increase of 16%, bringing the share to 56% in 2020—the first time more than half of its internet users shopped online.

Among European countries, the largest increases were reported in Greece, at 18%, and in Ireland, Hungary and Romania, at 15% each. One reason for these differences was the substantial gap between countries in digitalization and in their ability to adopt digital technologies quickly to limit economic disruption. The least developed countries particularly needed support to develop e-commerce.

Official statistics from China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, South Korea, Australia and Singapore—together accounting for roughly half of global GDP—showed that online retail sales increased from about US$2 trillion in 2019 to US$2.5 trillion in 2020 and US$2.9 trillion in 2021. Although pandemic disruption and economic uncertainty constrained overall retail growth, online retail expanded strongly as more people shopped online. Its share of total retail sales rose from 16% in 2019 to 19% in 2020. Growth continued in 2021 even as offline sales began to recover. Online sales accounted for about one quarter of total retail sales in China in 2021, compared with about one eighth in the United States.

According to UNCTAD, 13 leading consumer-focused e-commerce businesses, including Alibaba, Amazon, JD.com and Pinduoduo, reported substantial revenue growth during the pandemic. Their combined sales rose from US$2.4 trillion in 2019 to US$2.9 trillion in 2020, then increased by a further third to US$3.9 trillion in 2021 at current prices.

The increase in online shopping further strengthened the market position of already dominant online retailers and marketplaces. Revenue at Alibaba, Amazon, JD.com and Pinduoduo grew by 70% between 2019 and 2021. Their combined share of sales across these 13 platforms rose from about 75% in 2018–2019 to more than 80% in 2020–2021.