The International eCommerce Opportunity

 

Does your eCommerce store serve international customers? If not, you may be missing out. While our research shows that only 3.4% of small- and medium-size business shipping volume is international, it also tells us that international markets hold enormous opportunity—especially if you carefully target customers in the right countries with products they can’t get locally.

Consider These International Stats

  • The bulk of eCommerce demand comes from outside the US—and that’s an increasing trend
    • According to eMarketer, the US eCommerce market represents only 22% of the global market and is growing much more slowly (1) (see graph)
  • Worldwide statistics underscoring the opportunity:
    • 82% of shoppers made at least one purchase from a foreign merchant in 2015
    • 35% of consumers currently shop on sites based outside of their home country, up from 26% in 2014
    • These customers spend on average $300 per year on foreign items, and 26% of them prefer to buy from US-based companies
    • This drive US cross-border sales to more than $294 billion in 2014, projected to reach $414 billion by 2018 (2)
  • Consumers in every country are becoming more comfortable purchasing internationally, with cross-border online consumer purchasing increasing 28% a year projected to reach $1 trillion by 2020 (3)

Global ecommerce vs US ecommerce
Graph Source: Retail Sales Worldwide Will Top $22 Trillion This Year (eMarketer)

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