E-commerce in Latin America … huge revenues and declining economies

Millions of Latin Americans quarantined at home due to the epidemic have gone online shopping, which has resulted in huge e-commerce revenues.
According to the “French”, the boom in sales has prompted small companies and neighborhood stores to adopt technology or use modern tools to communicate in order to protect their customers.
The Covid-19 epidemic has contributed to “changing habits and has played a crucial role in the boom in e-commerce.” More than ten million people in Latin America have never resorted to the World Wide Web for shopping, and they regularly buy their needs from the Internet, according to Oscar Silva, an expert in global strategies at KPMG Consulting in Mexico.
Mercado Libre, which is available in 18 countries with its business model similar to that of Amazon or eBay, is the largest regional e-commerce platform.
At a time when the Latin American economy was collapsing, sales of the online platform doubled in the second quarter of the year, and the number of purchases increased by 45.2 percent to 51.1 million.
Its capitalization on the stock exchange reached 55 billion dollars, raising the ranks of the Brazilian company “Valais”, the largest company in Latin America.
“People were afraid of being scammed or the product would not live up to their expectations,” says Oscar Silva. “But it is very likely that a large number of buyers will become regular customers after realizing how easy and effective online shopping is.”
David Gessen, director of the Mexican branch of “Mercado Liberia”, points out that “loyal users now buy within 12 days what they used to buy in the 17 days before the outbreak of the epidemic … and those who used to shop on the Internet from time to time now buy in 29 days. They buy it in a year. “
At the beginning of the general isolation, sales were based in large part on medical masks, anti-bacterial disinfectants, thermometers and oxygen meters, but soon expanded to include other goods and services.
The consumer fever on the Internet, fueled by fear of contagion in closed economies, such as Cuba, has spread, where sales of the e-government platform “TwinView” have increased.
The expert in “KPMG” points out that several companies went bankrupt, because they were not presenting their goods on the Internet or because they were not proficient in working in this field.
He explains that “the big platforms are the winners, but some neighboring companies have succeeded in maintaining their customers or gaining more of them by resorting to simple tools such as WhatsApp.”
According to the “AppSphere” group, downloads of e-commerce applications increased 93 percent in the second quarter of the year in Latin America, led by Brazil and Mexico.