Online shopping has slowed – but it’s still growing.

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If one looks at the numbers we’ve received lately from the likes of Walmart and Target as well, they’re all saying there’s been like a stimulus and a pandemic flush that’s basically coming out of the system.

Now, if you look at e-commerce as a percentage of retail sales going into the pandemic, it was growing at about 14% per annum on average. We then had a very big spike during Covid. Ever since then it’s been trending back to that 14% level. If you look at it in absolute terms, it was about 11% of total retail sales going into the pandemic; that then shot up to about 16.5% at its peak and now it’s back down to around about that 14.3%-odd level. So, over a two-year period it has pretty much shot up and come back down, but it’s still in line with long-term average growth rates.
3 Aug 2022 11PM English South Africa Business News · Investing

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