The ecosystems of leading ecommerce players like Amazon, Alibaba, Netflix, and Tencent will enable these companies to drive their growth through the COVID-19 pandemic, says GlobalData.

GlobalData’s recent report, COVID-19 impact on Ecommerce reveals that the UK online food and grocery market is expected to grow nearly 20% in 2020 to £13.2bn as supermarkets experience unprecedented demand for home grocery delivery. However, social distancing measures have dealt a significant blow to clothing and footwear retailers with GlobalData forecasting a drop in UK online sales of 7.9% from 2019 levels.

Luke Gowland, Thematic Analyst at GlobalData, commented: “COVID-19 has given the ecommerce sector a boost, with online grocery retailers the biggest beneficiaries. However, we believe that online clothing and footwear retailers will still have an opportunity to grab market share from their high street rivals”.

The worst-affected ecommerce players are online travel agencies and online estate agents. Where once online travel agencies were disrupting the market and taking down big names in the process, now they are the ones being disrupted. Ride sharing is another victim of COVID-19, with the majority of the world practicing social distancing, the demand for shared mobility has decreased dramatically. Lyft and Uber have experienced a decline in bookings of 75% and 80% respectively.

Gowland adds; “Companies will be focusing on their supply chains and how technologies such as the cloud, 5G, IoT, and blockchain can help to improve their efficiency and robustness. Ultimately, ecommerce will benefit from COVID-19 with even the worst effected companies in this sector likely to build momentum once lockdown restrictions have been lifted.”

IMAGE FOR PUBLICATION OF ‘ECOMMERCE SCORECARD’

GlobalData’s Thematic Scorecard ranks companies within a sector on the basis of overall leadership in the 10 themes that matter most to their industry, generating a leading indicator of future earnings growth.

Information based on GlobalData’s report: COVID-19 Impact on Ecommerce