For the United Kingdom, data provides Internet sales as a percentage of total retail sales. Data for the second quarter 2020 are preliminary estimates.
Note: For the United States, data provides estimates for e-commerce as a percent of total retail sales, based on data from the Monthly Retail Trade Survey and administrative records. The COVID-19 crisis has increased the share of e-commerce in total retail Similar changes are also observed for other regions, including the People’s Republic of China (hereafter China), where the share of online retail in total accumulated retail sales between January and August 2020 reached 24.6%, up from 19.4% in August 2019 and 17.3% in August 2018.įigure 1. The development is similar for the United Kingdom, where the share of e-commerce in retail rose from 17.3% to 20.3% between the first quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2020, to then rise significantly to 31.3% between the first and second quarter of 2020. For example, while in the United States the share of e-commerce in total retail had only slowly increased between the first quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2020 (from 9.6% to 11.8%), it spiked to 16.1% between the first and second quarter of 2020. The resulting shifts from brick-and-mortar retail to e-commerce are likely significant across countries. In the EU-27, 2 retail sales via mail order houses or the Internet in April 2020 increased by 30% compared to April 2019, while total retail sales diminished by 17.9% ( Figure 1).
However, sales increased for grocery stores and non-store retailers (mostly e-commerce providers), 1 by 16% and 14.8% respectively. In the United States, retail and food services sales between February and April 2020 were down 7.7% compared to the same period in 2019. Self-imposed social distancing to avoid contagion, together with the strict confinement measures implemented in many OECD countries, have put a large share of traditional brick-and-mortar retail virtually on hold, at least temporarily (OECD, 2020). The COVID-19 crisis has led people in many OECD countries to significantly limit physical interactions. There has been a shift in demand from brick-and-mortar retail to e-commerce