Spring 2011

Christmas time is when the eCommerce stats are circulated to provide further evidence of just how much the web is disrupting retail.

In the past we have provided evidence of why this isn't the case. This year I thought we would take a quick look at how the eCommerce revolution is working out in the big 4 developing nations (e.g. Brazil, Russia, India and China).

In this first chart I have remapped the Ofcom eCommerce data released earlier this week with the average wage data for 2010 and the level of Internet access. The size of the balloon reflects the average yearly spend online per Internet user.

As you can see the developed nations with more money to spend dominate both access and dollars spent online.

But what happens when the dollars spent online are remapped as a percentage of the average wage?

As you can see in the chart below eCommerce in Brazil appears to be a lot more competitive while the UK and the Australia appear to be the world leaders in the adoption of online spending.

Somewhat surprisingly, far from being a trend setter, the USA - the nation that brought us the Sears Mail Order Catalogue, The Home Shopping (TV) Network , Amazon and Cyber Monday - remains something of a "middling" nation when it comes eCommerce adoption.

This next chart expresses eCommerce expenditure as percentage of the average wage by the average wage relative to the average wage in India. Again the balloon is an expression of the size of the average eCommerce expenditure relative to the average eCommerce expenditure in India.

The final chart in the series illustrates eCommerce expenditure as a percentage of the average wage by the eCommerce percentage share of retail in just the developed economies. Again the USA would best be described as a "middling" nation when it comes to eCommerce adoption rates.

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