July - 2013 - issue > View Point
E-Commerce: Power for the Next Generation
Raj Subramaniam
Executive Vice President - Global Strategy, Marketing & Communications-FedEx Services
The largest driving force in the global economy is now e-Commerce. By changing how we buy, and from whom, the marketplace connects consumers in the most populous countries of China and India to an entrepreneur with an idea, a product, and a laptop.
E-Commerce is getting faster and smarter, but a truly borderless global economy relies on both the Internet and a worldwide delivery network, like FedEx. Celebrating the company’s 40th Anniversary in April, it’s interesting to reflect on the world in 1973 – before personal computers, digital cameras, or mobile communication – and realize that all industrial revolutions involve innovation.
That innovation over the past four decades is perhaps best illustrated by China, whose growth in e-Commerce specifically has been nothing short of meteoric. The United States definitely took the lead in the e-Commerce game in the mid-1990s with the advent of shopping sites such as Amazon and eBay. Yet China is now the second-largest e-Commerce market in the world, with online sales of $194 billion in 2012—and it is soon to be the first with expected sales to reach $420 billion by 2015.
The figures are indeed stunning: By 2020 Chinese e-tailing is projected to match the size of today’s U.S., U.K., Japan, German, and French markets combined, reaching up to $650 billion in sales, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. That is backed up by the 193 million Chinese consumers who shop online, more than any other country in the world.
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