Asia's retail industry beating the rest of the world's, thanks to e-commerce

IF YOU want to see the future of retail, look to Asia. The region is responsible for about three-quarters of worldwide retail growth and over 30 per cent of online growth, and several markets are leapfrogging the development stages that US and European retailers took years to go through, research by Bain & Company has revealed.

Between 2014 and 2019, the region's compound annual growth for retail sales was more than 4 times higher than, and online sales growth was almost twice as large as, the rest of the world's. And while e-commerce was always going to disrupt the industry, the pandemic dramatically accelerated this transformation and changed consumer habits for good, prompting NielsenIQ to declare in early 2021 that "the end of the beginning of e-commerce" in Asia is upon us.

Each country's level of digital maturity will determine its respective retail sectors' health, but it is clear that "almost all the growth in retail fast-moving consumer goods will come from e-commerce". Despite the industry's massive potential, barriers to growth remain.