In December 2022, forecasts predicted significant e-commerce growth in the Asian and American e-commerce markets. The Philippines and India would top the list with the highest growth rates, with online sales increasing by 24.1 percent and 22.3 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, Mexico and Argentina's e-retail sales were to outpace those of other countries in the Americas, with a growth rate of about 14 percent.
A growing global e-retail market
Partly fueled by a rapid increase in internet users worldwide over recent years, along with mobility constraints and the shutdown of physical stores during the COVID-19 pandemic, the global e-commerce retail market expanded fourfold from 2014 to 2022. Central to this growth has been the widespread adoption of mobile commerce, which entails online shopping through smartphones, particularly prominent in various regions of the global South. Forecasts suggested that m-commerce sales in Argentina are poised to surge by around 2.4 times between 2022 and 2026.
Fast-growing markets fueled by local players
While online retail giants Amazon and Alibaba Group wield global dominance in the e-commerce landscape, they do not hold the top positions in many of the fastest-growing e-commerce markets. Based on monthly website traffic, Singaporean e-retailer Shopee is the leading e-commerce site in Singapore by a significant margin. This trend is even more pronounced in Argentina, where Mercado Libre garners nearly 50 times the traffic witnessed on Amazon's Spanish page, amazon.es.
