E-Commerce

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In 2024, global retail e-commerce sales reached an estimated six trillion U.S. dollars. Projections indicate a 31 percent growth in this figure over the coming years, with expectations to come close to eight trillion dollars by 2028. 

Among the key players on the world stage, the American marketplace giant Amazon holds the title of the largest e-commerce player globally, with a gross merchandise value of nearly 800 billion U.S. dollars in 2024. Amazon was also the most valuable retail brand globally, followed by mostly American competitors such as Walmart and the Home Depot.

E-commerce is a dormant channel globally, but nowhere has it been as successful as in Asia. In 2024, the e-commerce revenue in that continent alone was measured at nearly two trillion U.S. dollars, outperforming the Americas and Europe. That year, the up-and-coming e-commerce markets also centered around Asia. The Philippines and India stood out as the swiftest-growing e-commerce markets based on online sales, anticipating a growth rate surpassing 20 percent.

From 2004 to 2024, the net revenue of Amazon e-commerce and service sales has increased tremendously. In the fiscal year ending December 31, the multinational e-commerce company's net revenue was almost 638 billion U.S. dollars, up from 575 billion U.S. dollars in 2023.
Amazon.com, a U.S. e-commerce company originally founded in 1994, is the world’s largest online retailer of books, clothing, electronics, music, and many more goods. As of 2024, the company generates the majority of it's net revenues through online retail product sales, followed by third-party retail seller services, cloud computing services, and retail subscription services including Amazon Prime.

Through Amazon, consumers are able to purchase goods at a rather discounted price from both small and large companies as well as from other users. Both new and used goods are sold on the website. Due to the wide variety of goods available at prices which often undercut local brick-and-mortar retail offerings, Amazon has dominated the retailer market. As of 2024, Amazon’s brand worth amounts to over 185 billion U.S. dollars, topping the likes of companies such as Walmart, Ikea, as well as digital competitors Alibaba and eBay. One of Amazon's first forays into the world of hardware was its e-reader Kindle, one of the most popular e-book readers worldwide. More recently, Amazon has also released several series of own-branded products and a voice-controlled virtual assistant, Alexa.

Due to its location, Amazon offers more services in North America than worldwide. As a result, the majority of the company’s net revenue in 2023 was actually earned in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. In 2023, approximately 353 billion U.S. dollars was earned in North America compared to only roughly 131 billion U.S. dollars internationally.

In the first quarter of 2025, online shoppers spent an average of about 2.42 U.S. dollars per visit across all verticals. Electronics is the category in which consumers spent the most money per visit on average, at 3.03 U.S. dollars, followed by apparel at 2.44 dollars. 

Over the past few years, the average order value for e-commerce purchases has increased globally, from around 118 U.S. dollars in September 2022 to around 138 U.S. dollars in the same month of 2024. The average order value also depends heavily on the online traffic source consumers use. In 2024, the value per order value was the highest when navigating directly, averaging around 114 U.S. dollars. Direct navigation means searching for a website directly in the browser's address bar, bypassing the use of search engines. Orders placed from social media stores were the lowest in value, with an average of less than 86 dollars. 

Online shoppers have clear preferences when it comes to device type. When comparing gadgets, the average purchase amount has always been the highest for desktops, with an order value of over 160 U.S. dollars. This indicates that bigger purchases are made via desktop computers. However, consumers are more likely to complete orders when shopping on mobile devices. Mobile devices were also clearly preferred when browsing retail websites, with around three-fourths of consumers using smartphones instead of desktops or tablets.

The market size of the global online food delivery sector was estimated at over one trillion U.S. dollars in 2023, of which 630 billion dollars were generated in the grocery delivery segment, and 390 billion dollars in the meal delivery segment. By 2029, the online food delivery market is forecast to generate revenues reaching 1.85 trillion U.S. dollars.

Online conversion rates of e-commerce sites were the highest in the beauty & skincare sector, at three percent in the first quarter of 2025. Food & beverage followed, with a 2.5 percent conversion rate. For comparison, the average conversion rate of e-commerce sites across all selected sectors stood at 1.7 percent. 

The conversion rate, which indicates the proportion of visits to e-commerce websites that result in purchases, varies by country and region. For instance, since at least 2023, e-commerce sites have consistently recorded higher conversion rates among shoppers in Great Britain compared to those in the United States and other global regions. Furthermore, despite the increasing prevalence of mobile shopping worldwide, conversions remain more pronounced on larger screens such as tablets and desktops.

Recently, the rate at which consumers abandon their online shopping carts has been gradually rising to more than 70 percent in 2025, showing a higher difficulty for e-commerce sites to convert website traffic into purchases. In 2024, food and beverage was one of the product categories with the lowest online cart abandonment rate, confirming the sector’s relatively high conversion rate. In the United States, the primary reason why customers abandoned their shopping carts is that extra costs such as shipping, tax, and service fees were too high at checkout.

In 2024, refund/policy abuse was the most common type of fraud, experienced by just under half of online merchants worldwide. Real-time payment fraud affected 45 percent of merchants, and phishing, pharming and whaling another 42 percent, according to the source. First-party misuse (also known as “friendly fraud”) impacted 39 percent of merchants. Both refund/policy abuse and first-party misuse occur post-purchase, so unlike phishing or card testing, are not attacks that can be stopped in real-time, making them more difficult for online merchants to manage.

Asia leads the ranking of biggest e-commerce markets worldwide. The total revenue of online retail in Asian countries added up to nearly 2 trillion U.S. dollars in 2024. This was approximately 500 million U.S. dollars higher than the e-commerce revenue reached in the Americas. Australia, Oceania, and Africa achieved far lower e-commerce revenues in 2024, with values below 50 billion U.S. dollars. Asia’s leading position can mostly be ascribed to China, which achieved a revenue of over 1.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2024. 

The e-commerce market is highly developed on the Asian continent, and will continue to grow. For instance, India is among the countries with the highest Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) for its e-commerce market. Between 2024 and 2029, the market value is forecast to grow with over 11 percent annually. The Latin-American e-commerce market is also forecast to grow quickly in the coming years.

Large Asian e-commerce markets have a strong influence over the rest of the world. A concrete example of an Asian e-commerce channel that is being adopted in the West is the TikTok Shop, connecting social media and e-commerce to form social commerce.

China is leading the ranking by revenue in the fashion e-commerce market, recording 207 billion U.S. dollars. Following closely behind is the United States with 182 billion U.S. dollars, while Russia is trailing the ranking with 6.6 billion U.S. dollars, resulting in a difference of 200.3 billion U.S. dollars to the ranking leader, China.

Find other insights concerning similar markets and segments, such as a ranking of subsegments in the United Kingdom regarding share in the e-commerce market as a whole and a ranking by country regarding revenue in the e-commerce market.

The Statista Market Insights cover a broad range of additional markets.