Latin America: e-commerce sales 2019-2020, by country

In 2020, e-commerce in Brazil was forecast to generate more than 19.22 billion U.S. dollars in sales, up from approximately 17.24 billion dollars recorded a year earlier. That represents an annual increase of over 11 percent. Mexico ranked second in Latin America and the Caribbean, with nearly 16.94 billion dollars in online sales revenue projected for 2020 – over 18 percent more than the 14.26 billion dollars revenue registered in 2019.

Emerging markets

Two major changes have been forecast for the region’s e-commerce in 2020. Argentina was expected to surpass both Chile and Colombia and rank third at over five billion U.S. dollars in e-commerce revenue. Meanwhile, Bolivia was projected to outperform Costa Rica and rank 12th with more than 464 million dollars in online sales in 2020. These shifts might result from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on digital consumer behavior.

E-commerce fever

The first half of 2020 saw the early effects of the coronavirus outbreak on e-commerce in Latin America. On average, online sales revenue grew by 230 percent in the region from the second week of March to second week of April 2020. Furthermore, almost eight out of ten consumers in Latin America said they wanted to keep shopping online after the pandemic is over.