- The COVID-19 pandemic boosted U.S. online shopping by $183 billion.
- During the period, U.S. consumers have spent a total of $844 billion online.
- Adobe predicts growth rates will be between $850 billion and $930 billion.
- Adobe Analytics covers over 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites and over 100 million SKUs.
The pandemic has boosted online shopping in the U.S.
The COVID-19 pandemic boosted U.S. online shopping by $183 billion. Adobe’s e-commerce division released the data this morning. This figure represents the increase in online shopping during the months of March 2020. This was when the pandemic began in the U.S and followed through February 2021. During this time, U.S. consumers spent a total of $844 billion online. Meanwhile, they spent $813 billion during the calendar year 2020 alone.
To put this $183 billion in perspective, Adobe notes it’s nearly the size of the last holiday shopping season when $188.2 billion was spent online during the months of November and December 2020. The firm expects this growth to continue in the years ahead, reaching $1 billion by 2022. The pandemic serves as an accelerant to many industries, pushing them years ahead of where their natural growth would have otherwise taken them.
Pandemic benefits almost every e-commercial platform in the U.S.
E-commerce benefitted from this trend as well. As consumers faced stay-at-home orders, nonessential retailers closed their doors, and in-person shopping was replaced with online commerce for many consumers. Adobe says the pandemic itself produced a “rare step change in online spending, equivalent to a 20% boost,” and noted the impacts will continue even as the pandemic comes to an end in the months to come.
The company’s analysts, for example, noted that the first two months of 2021 (Jan.-Feb. 2021), have already seen consumer spending of $121 billion in the U.S, or a 34% year-over-year increase. Also during this time, the buy-now-pay-later method for online shopping has jumped up by 215% year over year, with orders that are 18% larger another factor in the growing sales driven by these changes.
Reports of Adobe analytics provide a growth rate between $850 billion and $930 billion.
Adobe predicts that current growth rates will continue, leading to the 2021 calendar year sales of somewhere between $850 billion and $930 billion. It then expects 2022 to deliver the first trillion-dollar year for U.S. e-commerce. Beyond the e-commerce sales increases, the pandemic may have also led to others. as long-lasting changes in terms of how people shop and what they’re buying.
Adobe said that both in-store and curbside pickup services had grown in adoption by 67% year over year, as of Feb. 2021. Consumers seem very receptive to this hybrid model of shopping. As with a recent Adobe survey finding that 30% of U.S. consumers actually prefer pickup over standard delivery, for instance.
