Internet consumption is picking up again after the peak of the pandemic, driven above all by the intense development of the digital channel that large traditional retailers have carried out in recent times and the consolidation of habits that campaigns such as Black Friday have brought. , whose next edition arrives in three weeks in the midst of a context of cost containment.
The 2020 confinement triggered e-commerce out of pure necessity, its lifting reduced it by about ten points, returning it to pre-pandemic levels, but starting in 2022 it has grown again steadily until reaching 28% of total purchases this year. 2023, just four points less than at the peak of confinement, indicates an analysis by CaixaBank Research based on anonymized internal data on card purchases.
“We no longer buy online only on Black Friday, it is a trend that continues and we will soon reach quotas that we have not seen since the pandemic,” explain Zoel Martín Vilató and Josep Mestres Domènech, authors of the analysis. The weight of electronic commerce has gone from representing an average of 20% of total consumption in 2018 to practically 28% this year. During the pandemic, the percentage of online spending exceeded 30% during the months of confinement, although it decreased again afterwards.
The weight of digital purchases in total commerce is also close to the levels of Black Friday week, where the online channel has greater penetration due to the characteristics of the campaign – short period of time and with a large presence of the electronics-. Digital consumption during those days reached 32% of spending made by card last year, indicates the CaixaBank study, six percentage points higher than any week in 2022. This year, however, the difference has been reduced to four points.
Among the categories that use e-commerce the most are tourism (travel agencies, hotels...), with 34% of total spending; and transportation, with 32%. Durable goods (appliances or clothing) appear far behind, with 11%; leisure (5%) and basic necessities, with barely 2% and which includes supermarkets. “Although the purchase of food or pharmaceutical products is basically face-to-face, online consumption shows high growth rates here,” comment the authors.
This advance in digital purchasing is supported by all age groups. With greater or lesser strength, it grows regardless of age, “evidently with greater intensity among the youngest,” add Martín Vilató and Mestres Domènech. Young people (16-29 years old) already make almost 40% of their spending online, while those over 65 years old make less than 10% of their purchases online, almost 30 percentage points of difference between the two groups. Spending on online purchases among those under 50 years of age has also increased by more than 10 points compared to 2018.
“The trend indicates that the e-commerce figures seen during the pandemic, which seemed extraordinary, will soon be the norm,” adds the study. The Black Friday consumption pattern will extend.
