Mar 15, 2021 - Technology

A year of the pandemic added another Christmas for e-commerce sales

Scott Rosenberg

A year of pandemic living drove U.S. consumers to spend an additional $183 billion online, according to a new study from Adobe released Monday. That's roughly the amount they spent during e-commerce's peak November-December holiday shopping season last year.

The big picture: Adobe is predicting 2021's total e-commerce sales to land between $850 billion and $930 billion, with the figure topping a trillion for the first time in 2022. That's compared to $813 billion in 2020, which was a big leap up from $573 billion in 2019, the last pre-pandemic calendar year.

Other findings:

"Branded shopping days" — like Memorial Day or Thanksgiving's "Black Friday" and Cyber Monday — lost some of their importance.
"Buy now, pay later" and "buy online, pickup in store" have both soared in popularity.
Pandemic-driven shortages and price spikes meant consumers got fewer good deals and saw their purchasing power, which Adobe says normally rises about 4% each year, drop by 1% instead.

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A year of the pandemic added another Christmas for e-commerce sales

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