South Africa
Online shopping exceeded R50 billion in 2022─── 11:41 Fri, 30 Dec 2022
Online shopping in South Africa exceeded R50 billion in 2022, signalling that this way of remote shopping which took off during the pandemic lockdowns, is not slowing down now that all restrictions have been lifted.
The Citizen reports that the growth in online shopping was driven by demand for home deliveries, according to new research findings from World Wide Worx and Mastercard published as Online Retail in South Africa 2022.
The study revealed that the total growth for online retail in South Africa in 2022 came to 35%, bringing the total of online retail in South Africa to R55 billion, after 40% growth the previous year took the total to R42.3-billion in 2021, 4% of the R1.166-trillion total, marking healthy growth from the 2.8% recorded in 2020. In 2022, total retail is expected to reach R1.16-trillion, with online retail making up 4.7% of the total.”
“You can call this the pandemic dividend,” Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx, says. “The 2020 boom in home deliveries continued for the past two years as retailers compete aggressively in every area of online shopping.”
Black Friday also boosted online sales, with banks reporting massive increases in card and online spending on what has become one of the year's biggest shopping days. Stellar performers included:
- Checkers Sixty60, which grew turnover by 150% from July 2021 to July 2022
- Mr Price, which reported online retail sales up 48.2% for the year to April 2022 and
- Pick ‘n Pay, which reported in its annual results for the year to the end of February 2022 that online sales had seen annual compound growth of 72.5% over the previous two years.
