The European Commissioner for Economy,
Paolo Gentiloni, has reasoned that digital
concerns “all sectors of our economy”, thereby
helping to make it a central plank of the
continent’s ambitions to “build back better”
after the crisis. And on a backdrop of stark
European Commission indings that showed
more than a ifth (22%) of households still
lacked a ixed broadband subscription as of
2019, and 42% of the EU population remains
deicient in basic digital skills, it’s clear that
there is much work to be done.
Then, there are the areas in which drastic
digital transformation already seems nigh-
on guaranteed. One of the most obvious of
those has been the boom in online shopping,
during a time when many of us have routinely
treated ourselves to items from e-tail stores as
an alternative to expenditure on hospitality
businesses. It shouldn’t be a great surprise,
then, that according to research data released
by Salesforce, daily online spending in the US
during the irst quarter of this year saw 117%
year-on-year growth. Meanwhile, digital
revenue around the world went up by
58% on a year-by-year basis, with countries
experiencing especially high growth in this
area including the likes of Canada (111%), the
Netherlands (108%) and the UK (91%).
While we’re on the subject of the prospects for
international ecommerce, how big a role can we
expect the Asia-Paciic region to play in that?
The short answer is: a very big one. As Statista
has observed, India is among the fastest-
growing online retail markets. Furthermore, the
tendency for many shoppers in Asia to make
online purchases on their phones, rather than