Birmingham
based marketing expert, Waseem Saddique, provides essential facts and
figures that could help businesses to take advantage of Brazil’s current
e-commerce boom.
As a nation,
Brazil has experienced exponential growth in recent years, recently overtaking
Britain as the world’s sixth largest economy. As the country continues its
surge up the economic rankings, Latin America’s largest nation is now
experiencing an e-commerce sales boom.
What’s
encouraging for national and international businesses is that future e-commerce
sales growth is likely to be highly driven by the power of social media and the
mobile internet. Although Brazil has put itself on the map as an economic
powerhouse, e-commerce had previously lagged behind other nations and the fact
there is still room for the e-commerce market to grow.
Recent
studies show that Brazil’s population is currently estimated to stand at around
195 million people; however, only 29 million people tend to make online retail
purchases, leaving a potentially huge audience for businesses to market
themselves towards.
In monetary
terms, figures from 2011 show that e-commerce revenue streams reached R$19
billion dollars (or 3.9% of retail sales). In 2009 these figures stood at R$11
billion (or 2.7%), highlighting the substantial growth that e-commerce sales
have witnessed.
Yet, despite
such significant growth, the fact remains that the number of Brazilian internet
users who consume goods online is still fewer than 40%. This is in stark
contrast to nations such as Spain, where 66% of internet users purchase goods
online and in Britain a whopping 81% of shoppers choose to buy goods using the
web. The reality is that the online marketing opportunities in Brazil are
massive.
Predictions are
already being made that mobile broadband penetration could reach 85% by the
year 2015, offering a mass audience for online marketing,
the likes of which Brazil has never seen. This will be a major platform for
businesses to launch large-scale online marketing campaigns, through social
media and mobile applications.
Many
Brazilians are now quickly adapting to the growing trend of online social
communication. Recent figures show that 87% of the Brazilian web audience are
now signed up to platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Therefore, the online
marketing scope for businesses across the world looking to target the Brazilian
e-commerce market is huge.
Waseem Saddique comments: “Arguably, more than anywhere else in the world, retailing
is becoming much more social.”
Retail
sources in Brazil have highlighted that around 30% of Brazil’s ‘online
community’ actually ‘follow’ retailers via their e-commerce sites, Facebook
pages or Twitter accounts. However, in countries such as Britain, just 12%
engage in such activity.
On the whole,
e-commerce retail analysts in Brazil have estimated that revenues have risen by
a staggering 127% during the first quarter of 2012.
