The coronavirus pandemic has fuelled an e-commerce boom in Asia, with e-commerce retailers seeing explosive sales over the past few months.According to Pablo Che León Sarmiento, head of customer success Asia at VTEX, not only did consumers move to e-commerce, but they were seemingly staying on the platform as lockdowns were being lifted.VTEX is a fully integrated commerce marketplace and OMS solution. “The e-commerce sales have continued to rise despite restrictions being lifted – a clear indicator that this is the new consumer behaviour going forward. It is now all about online, digital and mobile.”E-commerce expert Kati Suominen said Covid-19 had created new challenges for companies to reach consumers who were clearly preferring online platforms.“But this episode has also created opportunities for all companies to modernise, digitise and create omnichannel businesses. E-commerce enables companies, particularly in international trade, to increase imports and exports.”She said e-commerce was highly correlated with trade. “Companies selling online are much likelier to export than those who are not. Research has found that more than 60% of companies that use e-commerce extensively are also exporters. The same trend is seen on the import side,” said Suominen. “Companies buying online are far more likely to import. It expands the marketplace by giving consumers the ability to purchase a wider range of products and services from both local and foreign businesses, but it also gives companies access to more consumers around the world.”China alone has boosted online shopping tremendously in the East and now makes up for almost half of global online retail sales, exceeding US sales which for the longest time were the leaders in e-commerce.These numbers, said Suominen, would only continue to grow. Alibaba, a Chinese multinational technology company specialising in e-commerce, retail, internet and technology, reported revenue of more than $23 billion for the April to June quarter alone, a 34% year-on-year rise. This was again seen in the September quarter earnings. “We delivered another solid quarter, said Maggie Wu, chief financial officer of the Alibaba Group.JD.com, an Alibaba rival, also posted very strong earnings. This company’s net income for the June quarter was more than $2 billion, rising over 2 500% year on year. E-commerce giant Alibaba reported revenue of more than $23 billion for the April to June quarter alone, a 34% year-on-year rise.“
