Emerging countries in Asia lead to new E-Commerce peak – How will this impact the Canadian economy

The online forecast site eMarketer released its new study on the subject of digital distribution of retail, travel and service products this week. eMarketer already made very clear at the beginning of the study that especially the Asian-Pacific region is the fastest-growing region in this respect and is consequently become the new capital. This led to a new record of business-to-consumer (B2C) E-commerce sales. Next year the estimate for B2C alone is set to grow E-commerce sales by around 23% in this region. China and Indonesia are leading the sales, with an expected 65% and 71%.

Canada, North America and Europe are regions in which E-Commerce has already reached a considerably more mature state and are set to still achieve a turnover well into the double-digit range – Notably this is17% below the world average for the year. Sales in the Middle East and Africa will grow faster this year, but starting from a much smaller base. Already almost one-third of all E-Commerce B2C in Asian Pacific region accounts for sales in the world. As a result, the region lies this year just below the total share and sales from North America. According to the study by eMarketer, the Asian Pacific region is likely to leave all other regions behind in the coming year with regard to its proportion of the total sales.

Other high-growth regions are the countries of Latin America, where total spending was nearly $46 billion this year, or even Central and Eastern Europe, where the digital buyer invested approximately $49 billion into the E-commerce market. The growth of E-commerce is also reinforced by further estimated 1.03 billion digital buyers in the world. However 44.4% come alone from the Asian Pacific region. China itself has approximately 270 million digital buyers this year – that includes all Internet users aged 14 years or older have purchased something over the Internet this year. The United States remains in 2nd place of the world rankings with 156 million digital buyers in 2013.

Basically there is still plenty of room for growth for Canadian Service providers, especially in emerging markets, where many Internet users are restricted in their ability to make digital purchases. Western Europe and North America are the only regions in the world where a majority of the online population are fully active with Internet shopping. In the Asian Pacific region the total number of Internet users will increase to 44.6% of the total population this year. According to an estimate by eMarketer, in the year 2017 it will be 54.2%. In principle, that the markets currently even one relatively a rather small number of Internet users have even those are who can quote the lowest E-Commerce growth. With the expansion of the Internet and global communications, vast new sections of the global population, will go online, opening up more and more opportunities for the E-commerce market. This in turn will open up new markets for network acceleration services, which will be the topic of the next article on the expanding global E-commerce market place.

Finally it must be pointed out that not all previous predictions by eMarketer have been accurate. The 2012/13 predictions for brick and mortar businesses in the USA to cross over into E-Commerce with electronic payment processing for services such as home improvements, plumbing, roof repair were far from on target. At a recent local trade and regional economics meeting in Toronto Brendan Foster, representative for major roofing company in Kentucky and regional coordinator for the Construction Industry Technology Development Bureau commented that the industry across North America was slow adopting the E-Commerce model and both customers and contractors alike needed more commercial information going forward to raise awareness. The fact that Home Depot is now set up to accept payments via PayPal is one good way to open the E-Commerce doors for the industry. Click here to see an example of a local contractor who has successfully embraced the E-Commerce model in Foster’s Region. On the global front, Europe and Japan a far ahead of the curve with B2C E-Commerce with significant growth in the last quarter of 2012. The Accuracy of eMarketers predictions for the rest of 2013 is yet to be seen. We will keep you posted on future developments and the impact on Canadian economics.