Latin America: e-commerce sales 2019-2021, by country

In 2021, e-commerce in Brazil was forecast to generate more than 23.8 billion U.S. dollars in sales, up from around 21.2 billion dollars recorded a year earlier. This represents an annual increase of more than 12 percent. While Mexico ranked second in Latin America and the Caribbean, with 21.2 billion dollars in online sales revenue projected for 2021, Argentina's e-commerce sales revenue was forecast to surpass 6.8 million dollars that year – over 23 percent more than the 5.5 billion dollar-revenue estimated for 2020.

Beyond an e-commerce fever

The year of 2020 was a turning point for online retail in Argentina. Even in the early days of mobility restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 outbreak, e-sales of consumer electronics and essential goods boosted e-commerce’s average revenue in the South American country. That might have been just the beginning. Projections adjusted for the impact of the pandemic indicate that electronics and media would be the leading category in Argentina in terms of online sales growth in 2021.

New preferences

Colombia’s online sales revenue was forecast to reach almost 6.27 billion dollars in 2021, whereas Chile’s was projected to amount to 6.2 million dollars. The COVID-19 outbreak affected the need for online shopping as well as consumers’ priorities in both markets. In Colombia, the annual spending per person on digital purchases increased by 35 percent. Concurrently, a survey suggested that e-shoppers in Chile wanted to buy more food and cleaning items and less of other types of products while the pandemic persisted.