It won’t be long before Asia takes the title from North America as being the world’s largest e-commerce market, according to a new report from the Economist Intelligence Unit.
The report released in Beijing said that “it is estimated that retail sales in Asia will grow by an average 4.6 percent on a volume basis to $7.6 trillion, compared with 2.5 percent in North America and 0.8 percent in Europe in 2015.”
What’s driving this e-commerce spike? Rising independence and economic power of Asian’s female consumers, said Laurel West, a report editor with the Economist magazine group.
“Female consumers in Asia are showing an unprecedented enthusiasm for online shopping,” according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. Nearly half the women said they prefer online shopping, and that increased in China’s mainland. Price and quality ranked as top reasons to shop online, followed by connivence and the ability to find genuine products.
“The proportion on the Chinese mainland was as much as 69 percent. Sixty-three percent of those polled browsed the Internet at least once a day for products and services, with nearly 30 percent doing so twice or more per day,” the report said.
Asian e-commerce is being driven at a rapid pace with Internet giants like Alibaba rapidly picking up pace across the region, which has lead to global expansion of the Chinese e-commerce site following its massively successful year.
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