The e-commerce industry will be worth over $4 trillion this year

New figures suggest the global e-commerce sector will be worth more than $4 trillion (€3.68 trillion) this year, but its growth is likely to slow in the coming years.

According to Stocklytics.com, the e-commerce sector will be worth $4.11 trillion (€3.78 trillion) this year, up 90% from 2019 ($2.18 trillion) and up 15% from last year.

After COVID-19 sparked a boom in online shopping, the market saw revenues grow by an average of 25% per year before declining in 2022 and 2023.

Statista predicts that 2024 and 2025 will see strong revenue growth rates again, with 14.6% and 16.4% year-on-year growth, respectively. However, following this recovery, the entire market will face a significant slowdown, resulting in revenue growth that is much lower than in previous years.

The trend of downsizing

“Global e-commerce revenues will grow by 11.5% in 2026, down almost 5% from the previous year, to $5.34 trillion (€4.91 trillion),” according to Stocklytics.com.

“The downsizing trend will continue in 2027, with the annual growth rate declining to 9.2%. While market revenues are forecast to grow to almost $6.5 billion (€5.98 billion) by 2029, the annual growth rate will fall to just 4.6%, which is just one-third of the growth forecast for that year.”

While all regions are expected to see a slowdown, Asia – the largest e-commerce market home to e-commerce giants such as Alibaba, AliExpress, JD.com and Rakuten – will see growth slow from 15.6% to 4.5% over the next five years.

Still, Asia is set to generate more than $3.15 trillion (€2.90 trillion) in revenue by 2029, more than half of global revenue.

The US market revenues will grow to $2 trillion (€1.84 trillion) by 2029, with the growth rate slowing from 14.6% to 4.7%. Europe will grow at a rate of 4.5% in 2029 (compared to 11.8%), with revenues reaching almost $1 trillion (€920 billion).

The data shows that despite the slowdown, the global e-commerce market will gain more than a billion new users over the next five years, with the number expected to grow from 2.5 billion in 2024 to 3.6 billion in 2029.

‘Significant changes’

“The global e-commerce landscape has changed significantly over the past five years,” Stocklytics.com adds. “New technologies, including artificial intelligence, voice search, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) shopping, and personalized customer service via voice search, have taken online shopping to a whole new level, virtually blurring the lines between online shopping and visiting a brick-and-mortar store.

“These changes have helped e-commerce attract more users and generate more revenue than ever before, despite headwinds and setbacks like supply chain issues, inflation, rising digital advertising costs and changing consumer behavior.”