The Categories with the Highest eCommerce Penetration

Picture of a person with their laptop on their lap beside a few books
 

By Tricia McKinnon

It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that one of the most purchased items online are books. How many times have you purchased a book on Amazon versus going into a bookstore? Books were the first category Amazon started with when the company launched 26 years ago in 1994. 

Jeff Bezos decided to start selling books online because there are more items in the book category than any other category. “Books were great as the first because books are incredibly unusual in one respect, that is that there are more items in the book category than there are items in any other category by far. Music is number two, there are about 200,000 active music CDs at any given time. But in the book space there are over 3 million different books worldwide active in print at any given time across all languages, more than 1.5 million in English alone. So when you have that many items you can literally build a store online that couldn’t exist any other way” said Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon.

 
eCommerce penetration rate by category
 

That initial focus on selling books online a quarter of a century ago has caused books to have a top place within the minds of online shoppers. Computer and consumer electronics has the second highest online penetration. This is because consumers like to research and shop online for electronics more than they do for other categories. If you compare shopping for electronics to shopping for furniture you can see that it’s much easier to buy a new computer online than a new couch. If you aren’t an interior designer it’s very hard to ascertain if the couch you want to buy will fit properly within your home. 

 
Chart of references for shopping digitally vs. instore
 

While food and beverages have the lowest eCommerce share it is the category experiencing the highest growth in online sales. Consumers have historically liked seeing and touching grocery items like produce before buying them, making consumers resistant to buying food online. But the pandemic has boosted online shopping for groceries and the shift towards buying more groceries online is likely to stay long after the pandemic is over since after trying online grocery shopping many have liked the experience. Sales of good and beverages in the United States are expected to increase by 58.5% in 2020.

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