BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 11
By Zeyni Jafarov - Trend:
Global e-commerce sales are crowding out the global retail market, Trend reports.
In accordance with the preliminary estimates, e-commerce sales will account for 17.5 percent of total global retail sales by 2021.
The future of e-commerce looks stable and there are no signs of slowing down its growth.
Thus, the international market of this type is expected to reach $4.9 trillion in 2021. In general, the demand for the e-commerce market will increase by 8.2 percentage points over the next five years.
In particular, the growth rate will accelerate to 19.5 percent in 2021, by 45.8 percent over the next two years and the growth will reach 21.8 percent by 2024.
Moreover, physical stores must take this into account and use the infrastructure to bring their offline business to an online platform, as physical stores have little chance of gaining victory over rivals in terms of ever-growing e-commerce.
They also must establish an online presence, otherwise, they will lose a big number of customers who strive for easy, fast and convenient online shopping.
Online shops must further strengthen their brands in the virtual world to maintain their positions.
Regarding the development of e-commerce in Azerbaijan, the relevant work is being carried out in this sphere in the country.
The Azerbaijan Small and Medium Business Development Agency has launched a new online sales platform (www.kobmarket.az) to support entrepreneurs in the online sale and promotion of products in early June 2021.
This portal was created mainly to support the development of micro and small businesses, online sales of products and services of SMEs through a single platform, and their popularization among the general public.
“Entrepreneurs can expand their sales opportunities through an e-commerce portal that provides users with a single payment and delivery service. The registration process is simple, the portal presents various tools that will allow an entrepreneur in the form of reports to track sales for each online store, manage stocks of goods, analyze buyers and other necessary information about sales,” the message said.
Azexport website (www.azexport.az) was created upon the order of the president ‘On the creation of a unified database of goods produced in Azerbaijan’ dated September 21, 2016.
The export orders worth $164.2 million in the first four months of 2021 were carried out through the Azerbaijani Azexport website as of early May 2021.
For 52 months of its activity, the Azexport website has fulfilled orders for the supply of non-oil products from Azerbaijan in the amount of over $2.3 billion to 145 countries.
In April 2021 among the TOP-10 exported goods of the Azexport website were cotton, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, chicken meat, milk powder, cottonseed oil, chicken eggs and tea.
The Analytical Media Center of Azerbaijan has conducted a survey on online ordering and delivery services during the period of special quarantine regime applied in the country amid the COVID-19 pandemic this year. Totally, 502 respondents took part in the survey.
According to the center, 38.8 percent of the survey participants are satisfied with the quality of delivery services, 48.6 percent said that their orders in rare cases were not delivered on time.
Moreover, 12.6 percent of those surveyed noted that their orders were not delivered in the desired form.
According to the survey, 74.1 percent of respondents used online ordering services up to 5 times a month, 21.3 percent - about 10 times, and 4.6 percent - more than 10 times.
"During the period of the special quarantine regime, two percent of respondents ordered food, 7.2 percent - household appliances and electrical appliances, eight percent - cosmetics and cleaning products, 19.7 percent - food, 43.6 percent - clothes and shoes, 19.5 percent were other goods.
According to the Central Bank of Azerbaijan, approximately seven million e-commerce transactions worth 380 million manat ($223 million) were carried out inside the country through debit and credit cards as of early May 2021.
About six million transactions worth 346 million manat ($203 million) of that volume accounted for debit cards while 995,000 transactions totaling 34 million manat ($20 million) – credit cards.
Any progressive business is always implemented with some difficulties, and it is necessary to increase the indicators of supply and demand for this or that process to develop.
Thus, sales through e-commerce in Azerbaijan are carried out, but they are at the development stage.
Economy Department of Trend News Agency