Big ticket e-commerce - statistics & facts
Big-ticket items are goods commercialized with higher selling prices and profit margins than most consumer goods. The big-ticket category includes a broad spectrum of merchandise — furniture, vehicles, luxury goods, and high-end consumer electronics. Over the last years, online sales of big-ticket products have increased at a steady pace.
In the last decade, the global market of online personal luxury goods underwent a nine-fold increase, hitting over 60 billion euros in 2021. In the same year, furniture e-commerce market had a value of nearly 30 billion U.S. dollars and is expected to grow to 41 million dollars by 2030.
Even though pre-purchase browsing is frequently done via online channels, consumers still rely on brick-and-mortar stores for the final transaction and payment, as revealed by a survey conducted in the United States. Skepticism towards big-ticket e-commerce might be due to several factors, including trust in online platforms selling this category of products.
However, turbulent economic times could be hiding a newfound opportunity for recommerce to grow. Indeed, inflation concerns have pushed more than nine in ten U.S. consumers to consider buying and selling secondhand items to save money. Forecasts indicate that the online market for secondhand furniture in the United States is expected to exceed 23 billion U.S. dollars by 2025. Similarly, the global luxury resale market is forecast to increase from 33 billion U.S. dollars in 2021 to more than 47 billion by 2025.
It’s a matter of trust
Very expensive products are not bought frequently, in some cases they might even represent a once-in-a-lifetime and well-considered purchase. One side effect of this is that big-ticket items like home furniture and luxury handbags have the highest cart abandonment rates, meaning that the vast majority of consumers do not finalize their purchases after navigating e-commerce platforms.Even though pre-purchase browsing is frequently done via online channels, consumers still rely on brick-and-mortar stores for the final transaction and payment, as revealed by a survey conducted in the United States. Skepticism towards big-ticket e-commerce might be due to several factors, including trust in online platforms selling this category of products.
How is consumer behavior responding to global economic upheaval?
Economic downturn and galloping inflation spell bad news for big-ticket segments already affected by low online shopping conversion rates. As of February 2023, the main issue impacting consumers’ online shopping experience was rising prices for household goods, meaning that discretionary segments such as home furniture and luxury apparel are bound to be left out of the list of essential consumer purchases. In fact, big-ticket e-commerce companies were hit hardest by the recent wave of layoffs in the e-commerce sector, as businesses that benefited from the pandemic-induced e-commerce boom were forced to reckon with a painful stagflationary hangover. Among e-tailers in the United States, online car retailer Carvana had one of the largest headcount reductions, with 2,500 layoffs in 2022.However, turbulent economic times could be hiding a newfound opportunity for recommerce to grow. Indeed, inflation concerns have pushed more than nine in ten U.S. consumers to consider buying and selling secondhand items to save money. Forecasts indicate that the online market for secondhand furniture in the United States is expected to exceed 23 billion U.S. dollars by 2025. Similarly, the global luxury resale market is forecast to increase from 33 billion U.S. dollars in 2021 to more than 47 billion by 2025.
