US, China Become Cross-Border Havens Of E-commerce

With e-commerce increasingly becoming cross-border, the US and China have emerged as the leaders of global online shopping, according to a PayPal study that puts their market size at $661.66 billion by 2017.

PayPal's second annual report on global e-commerce tracked the habits of 23,200 consumers in 29 countries to compile its data.

The mobile commerce segment is growing at an annual rate of 30 per cent, according to PayPal and Ipsos data.

The "Made in the USA" continues to hold sway around the world. A 25 per cent of online shoppers report purchasing from US-based websites in the last 12 months followed by China with 19 per cent and the UK 14 per cent.

Japan has a lower volume of cross-border shoppers at 12 per cent.

"By identifying the purchasing habits of global consumers, our research allows businesses to harness new trade opportunities around the world," said Melissa O'Malley, director of global merchant and cross-border trade initiatives at PayPal.

China's growing consumer class has entered more into the global online ecommerce market as 35 percent of online shoppers claim to have shopped cross-border in 2015 compared with 26 per cent in 2014.

Ireland, Austria and Israel are the most active cross-border shoppers with 86 per cent, 85 per cent and 79 per cent respectively of online shoppers having made a cross-border purchase in the past 12 months.

Among all consumers surveyed around the world, 16 per cent of their online spend was made via smartphone.

Nigeria’s online shoppers estimate that 37.8 per cent of their online spend in the last 12 months was conducted via smartphone, followed by China (34 per cent) and UAE (31 per cent).

The opportunity for mobile spending growth is highest in France, the Netherlands and Argentina.

At the same time, half of all online shoppers said that free shipping would make them more likely to buy from a foreign website.

Forty-three per cent of online shoppers cited shipping cost as the top reason for abandoning an online purchase from a website in another country.