A Deep Dive into the $1.3 Trillion Spent Last Year
Chain Store Age (CSA) reports on a new report highlighting today’s skyrocketing e-commerce sales. According to comScore’s State of Digital Commerce study, consumers spent $1.3 trillion online last year (on desktops and mobile)—about $1 trillion more than in 2013.
This crowns 2023 as “the highest-spending online retail year ever.” The 4th quarter of 2023 was the highest-spending quarter in online retail history, ringing up sales of $389.2 billion, up 17% from the 4th quarter of 2022.
What are consumers buying online? Tops in 2023:
- Grocery/baby/pet: $266 billion
- Apparel/accessories: $204 billion
- Computers and peripherals: $133 billion
- Consumer electronics: $99 billion
- Furniture and appliances: $93 billion
CSA points out that for the first time in years, in the 4th quarter of last year, year-over-year, “desktop spending growth (21.1%) beat the rate of mobile spending growth (10.9%).”
To compare, in the 4th quarter of 2022, online mobile sales (26.3%) grew about twice as fast as desktop (13.5%).
CSA says comScore believes “this possibly indicates mobile has reached its peak share of digital sales, falling to 36.3% in 2023 from 38.4% in 2022.”
Interestingly, CSA says the retail keywords that saw the “most heightened social engagement between 2021 and 2023” were all about saving money: “bargain” was up 308%, “budget” rose 208%, and “bulk” increased 142%.
Rieva Lesonsky is CEO of GrowBiz Media, a media and custom content company focusing on small business and entrepreneurship. Email Rieva at rieva@smallbusinesscurrents.com, follow her on Twitter @Rieva, and visit her website SmallBusinessCurrents.com to get the scoop on business trends and sign up for Rieva’s free Currents newsletter.
Online sales stock image by sophiecat/Shutterstock
