North America third-largest B2C e-commerce region in the world, surpassed by Asia-Pacific and Europe

The North American B2C e-commerce market’s turnover continued to grow by double digits in 2014. However, at a turnover growth of 12.2%, North America was still the slowest growing region in the world, as a result of which the gap with Asia-Pacific and Europe increased.

For 2015, the growth rate of the North American online sales is expected to increase a little to 12.6%, but this will not be enough to catch up with the other two main B2C e-commerce regions.

In 2014, the North American B2C e-commerce turnover surpassed the mark of $ 500.0bn and eventually amounted to $ 522.9bn. In comparison, the online sales of the Asian-Pacific market reached $ 770.0bn and those of Europe $ 562.0bn.

Within North America, the United States of America was clearly the most important e-commerce market as its online sales amounted to $ 482.7bn last year, which represents more than 87% of the total North American B2C e-commerce turnover. With $ 27.8bn, Canada is the second-largest B2C e-commerce market, followed by Mexico with $ 12.4bn.

Even though the Internet penetration is relatively low in Mexico, with only 44% of the population being connected to the Internet, the importance of e-commerce is growing tremendously. This is evidenced by the share of e-commerce in the total GDP of the country. In 2014, this so-called eGDP nearly reached 1.00%, which represents a growth of more than 400% compared to 2009.

Source: www.ecommerce-europe.eu