E-commerce experienced a massive surge during the pandemic. The ever-expanding e-commerce landscape spreads out across geographies, integrating the world into one big marketplace.
The drastic increase in the number of online shoppers worldwide during the current pandemic indicates the shift in consumer behavior towards online shopping. During the holiday season, cross-border shopping grows exponentially as prices on items that are not available locally to attract customers all over the world.
Cost, speed, and reliability reasoned a wider adoption of cross-border payments for e-commerce. Cross-border payments breaking down traditional shopping borders has created opportunities for businesses, making it easier for them to expand to new markets and attract a broader range of customers.
Deloitte is forecasting an 11% to 15% increase in 2021 holiday e-commerce sales compared with the same period in 2020.
The opportunities are especially wide during holiday sales, as consumers prefer to order gifts for their loved ones from huge marketplaces, including, Ali Express, Amazon, and for the obvious reasons, including, highly differentiated products range, cheaper prices, and well-established delivery methods attract customers all over the world for the frictionless shopping experience.
Social media platforms establishing trends
The other direction is the development of e-commerce via social media platforms, such as Instagram.
Nowadays Instagram is a showcase of retailers with extensive payment and commerce opportunities. The platform developed its own “Shop on Instagram” feature that enables authentic, unknown designers and retailers all over the world to sell their exclusive products.
This strategy depicts the difference of Instagram shopping among other giant competitors. The potential target market for Instagram sellers is mostly fashion and trend industry followers, who give value to unique, authentic, and often hand-made products.
Maintaining an effective Instagram sales strategy Insta-preneurs as they often call themselves benefit from the extensive e-commerce opportunities of the platform. Instagram retailers offer much more flexible customer support, adapting their products to the needs of each customer. The rate hits the peak during holidays when people are especially eager to buy something extraordinary and special for their loved ones.
Social Diversion and Financial Inclusion
The evolvement of digitalization with the further emergence of digital payments is the main driving reason for the development of financial inclusion. Financial Inclusion drives the expansion of cross-border e-commerce and embraces all social layers leaving no place for people to stay underserved.
The increasing use of smartphones provides access to the payment services for underserved popularity which leaves no way to doubt that e-commerce would penetrate into these emerging markets.
According to Global Index Database, nearly 69% of adults – 3.8 billion people have access to mobile banking as for 2018. From 2014 to 2017, 515 million adults obtained an account, and 1.2 billion have done so since 2011.
Specifically, people living in small towns with less access to various bank services and limited product range got the perfect opportunity to order and pay for everything easily with the e-wallet or other types of smartphone payments.
Logistics
As the research by Logystyx states 55% of online shoppers from around the world would be open to buying holiday gifts from countries other than their own, but almost half (48%) are concerned about their cross-border purchased gifts will not arrive in time.
The e-commerce delivery solutions with different distribution models prevent road problems that cause delays and extra costs ensuring uninterrupted delivery. These options involve online tracking and notification messages to ensure customers' comfort and support.
In conclusion, e-commerce sales get their steady development as consumers demonstrate an ongoing preference to buy online across all categories. The diversification of payments methods, frictionless shipping and access to the wider product range offer attract customers, driving the expansion of e-commerce all over the world.
