The United States and the United Kingdom recently published some official statistics on the impacts that this pandemic has had on ecommerce. The above chart is from Benedict Evans and he has some more over here. It's worth a click through. What is clear is that lockdown forced a whole bunch of adoption and accelerated trends that were already underway. More people turned to shopping online. The UK went from 20% ecommerce penetration to over 30%. And the US went from 17% to about 22%. What is also clear is that grocery has demonstrated to be exceptionally resilient. Most physical retailers saw a decline in sales during lockdown. Grocery proved to be a notable exception. But what is unclear is how much of this adoption will actually stick. The UK is reporting monthly (as opposed to quarterly for the US) and already you can see signs of a possible reversion. My guess is that -- provided we don't see another major lockdown -- there will be a meaningful reversion before the trend line resumes its march.

The United States and the United Kingdom recently published some official statistics on the impacts that this pandemic has had on ecommerce. The above chart is from Benedict Evans and he has some more over here. It's worth a click through. What is clear is that lockdown forced a whole bunch of adoption and accelerated trends that were already underway. More people turned to shopping online. The UK went from 20% ecommerce penetration to over 30%. And the US went from 17% to about 22%. What is also clear is that grocery has demonstrated to be exceptionally resilient. Most physical retailers saw a decline in sales during lockdown. Grocery proved to be a notable exception. But what is unclear is how much of this adoption will actually stick. The UK is reporting monthly (as opposed to quarterly for the US) and already you can see signs of a possible reversion. My guess is that -- provided we don't see another major lockdown -- there will be a meaningful reversion before the trend line resumes its march.