Alibaba Group started to allow merchants who are trading on AliExpress to offer their shoppers free returns in eight countries. When the pilot is successful Alibaba Group might rollout this functionality of the Chinese marketplace on a wider scale. The pilot programme will see merchants selling in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Spain, Germany, France, Russia
Hema takes the US with Walmart.com
Hema will be expanding to the US and Canada. To do this, it collaborated with Walmart: the online platform of the world’s largest retailer. This summer, consumers in the US will be able to purchase household products via walmart.com. Later this year, the retailer will open up independent stores in Canada and open up shop-in-shops in the biggest stores of Walmart in Canada this
Amazon leads online grocery market, but remains a modest player
Amazon is currently leading the online shopping market in the United States. According to Bloomberg, the online retailer’s turnover of 2018 was worth at least 25.4 billion dollars. However, Brick Meets Click researchers say that amount only equals 5.5% of the total revenue in the United States. Amazon took over the chain ‘Whole Foods’ approximately two years ago, for 13.7
Mobile sales will account for 34% of all US e-commerce sales
Mobile e-commerce retail sales will make up 24% of all US e-commerce sales in 2019. That accounts for an estimated amount of 203.94 billion dollars. Desktop purchases are still dominating with 331.85 billion dollars in 2019, but the growth rate is only 5%. Over 50% of the smartphone users this year are going to make a minimum of one online purchase from their device. The
Fraud fears unnecessary limit cross‑border e-commerce
Demand from online shoppers globally to purchase from US retailers is high. However, a lot of retailers reject foreign e-commerce orders automatically. By carefully planning and choosing familiar markets, retailers from the US can increase their international sales without experiencing large fraud losses. There was a slight dip in the growth of US e-commerce retail in 2018.