Leading online retailers worldwide 2021-2027, by sales

As of 2022, Alibaba Group was the largest e-commerce retailer worldwide, generating an estimated 780 billion U.S. dollars in annual online sales. Amazon was the second largest e-commerce retailer in this time period, with around 690 billion U.S. dollars in online sales. However, forecasts project that Amazon will overtake Alibaba by 2027, with estimated annual online sales exceeding 1.2 trillion U.S. dollars.

Market presence may make the difference

Alibaba Group operates predominantly within China, the country with the largest population and one of the highest rates of e-commerce adoption in the world. Amazon, on the other hand, does not have such an established stronghold there, but operates in many major e-commerce markets worldwide.

The non-uniform growth of the global e-commerce market

Online sales have, in recent years, become an increasingly significant part of global retailing. Aided by the COVID-19 pandemic, the e-commerce share of total global retail sales nearly doubled between 2017 and 2022. However, this growth is not uniform across countries, with fast-growing e-commerce markets in South America such as Brazil and Argentina projected to grow more rapidly in the coming years, compared to more mature markets like China and South Korea.