Worldwide e-Commerce Development: After the COVID-19 and the Current Economic Crisis, Could We Expect a Catch-Up and Convergence Between Countries?

Online shopping is a global trend, which has been exacerbated by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. One may wonder if a convergence of e-commerce penetration rates between countries is likely to happen around the world or at least at a regional level. After a survey of the literature on e-commerce drivers, to contribute to answering those questions, we estimate several econometric models with the aim of explaining the variation in e-commerce penetration rates among a sample of developed and developing countries. Our results confirm the positive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on e-commerce development. We show that some drivers are common to developed and developing countries, namely, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, country coverage of telecommunication infrastructure, quality of postal infrastructure, and the share of women having access to Internet. Others are specific to a category of countries, including the degree of education of the population in developed countries or the age of the population in developing ones. We also find that cultural factors have a significant effect on e-commerce adoption, suggesting that a convergence of e-commerce penetration rate is unlikely to happen at the world level.