Ecommerce Category Statistics & Trends

Key Takeaways:

• Health/Beauty and Food/Beverage are two merchandise categories that stand out in terms of pandemic-era growth.
• Top 1000 retailers in the Health/Beauty category increased their online sales by 9.8% in 2022 over 2021, tying them with merchants in the Hardware/Home Improvement segment for top year over-year growth.
• Over the three years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Health/Beauty category grew by a compound annual growth rate of 26.1%, making it the second fastest-growing category in the Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000.
• Leading the way in pandemic-period growth was Food/Beverage, which posted a compound annual growth rate of 32.4% from 2019, the last year before COVID-19 hit, through 2022. However, online sales in that category grew by only 3.4% in 2022 as many consumers returned to shopping for food in supermarkets.
• Growth in online sales of food and drink did not begin with the pandemic. In the five year period from 2014 to 2019, Top 1000 sales in the Food/Beverage category posted a compound annual growth rate of 33.6%, easily the fastest growth among the 14 merchandise categories into which Top 1000 retailers are grouped.
• The merchandise category with the largest number of Top 1000 retailers is Apparel/Accessories, with 247 merchants. Within that category, Handbags stands out as a sub-category that has fared well online in recent years. Handbags led all clothing subcategories in growth during the three years of the pandemic, posting 40.0% compound annual growth, and placed second in 2022 year-over year growth at 20.2%.