E-Commerce Retail Just Passed $1 Trillion For The First Time Ever

Digital commerce just passed the $1 trillion mark in a single year for the first time ever, according to Comscore. E-commerce hit $1.09 trillion in the U.S. in 2022, with the last quarter accounting for $332.2 billion, the analytics and measurement company said in an exclusive to Forbes. This doesn’t include travel, which would like add a few hundred billion dollars of revenue.

A key driver?

Mobile, which grew at twice the rate of desktop e-commerce.

“The strong 18% growth of digital commerce seen in Q4 was driven largely by mobile’s 26% YoY jump,” the latest State of Commerce report from Comscore says. “After multiple years of hovering in the low 30s, mobile’s share of total digital commerce dollars has nearly reached 40%.”

The top five highest-grossing categories are:

1. Grocery/baby/pet: $219 billion
2. Apparel and accessories: $175 billion
3. Computers and peripherals: $117 billion
4. Consumer electronics: $85 billion
5. Furniture and appliances: $76 billion

The five fastest-growing categories are:

1. Event tickets: 75% growth
2. Digital content: 60% growth
3. Apparel and accessories: 37% growth
4. Video games and accessories: 31% growth
5. Home and garden: 25% growth

Digital commerce growth continues to accelerate, according to Comscore. While it took four years starting in 2013 to add $129 billion of U.S. e-commerce, the next four years added nearly double that amount: another $264 billion. But just two years of the Covid pandemic added even more: an additional $300 billion of digital sales.

It’s not just Comscore.

Adobe says that holiday season sales late last year were another record, totaling $211.7 billion in November and December. Discounting, Adobe says, drove the additional sales in spite of inflation-raised pricing. Comscore’s estimate for the full Q4 2022 period is $239 billion.

One of the big stories of 2022 was the massive growth of event tickets, Comscore says.

At 75% year-over-year growth, event tickets show the impact of re-opening post Covid. Not only are the dollars growing in that space, but online sales of tickets is now brushing up against 90% share of market. Just a few years ago in 2019, in-person ticket purchases still accounted for the majority of sales.

Another space that’s seen massive growth is grocery, ballooning 333% in four years from 2018 to the end of 2022. In Q4 2018, Americans spent under $15 billion buying groceries online. In Q4 2022, that number hit $64 billion — almost half of it on mobile devices.

Social commerce is also growing, says Comscore, with 153% more engagement on retailer and brand-sponsored content on Facebook and 175% increase on Instagram. Relative newcomer TikTok also saw growth: 33% more “actions” in consumer goods categories, and 150% increase in direct retail engagements. But views, which don’t necessarily translate directly to sales, were up a staggering 407% from 2020 to 2022 for U.S. retail and consumer packaged goods brands.

Interestingly, 86% of TikTok users also use — or at least visit — Amazon.

Social commerce, Comscore concludes, is becoming a larger part of the retail ecosystem.