Most of the world has yet to resume any semblance of normal activity, though some regions are starting to make plans for what comes next. This article is designed to provide an update on ChannelAdvisor aggregate gross merchandise value (GMV) trends.
First, some important points to understand before digging into the data:
- This data is based on marketplaces GMV aggregated across our entire customer base globally and compares Jan 1 – Apr 13, 2019 against Jan 1 – Apr 12, 2020. The final dates are offset by one day due to leap year.
- The data presented below highlights only specific marketplace categories, which are merely a subset of all categories. Because marketplaces have different category structures, the data is presented using categories that have been standardized by ChannelAdvisor.
- This data is not a proxy for overall e-commerce activity or the performance of any individual business, including ChannelAdvisor or any individual marketplace.
- The data shown below is based on a year-over-year comparison of trailing 7-day GMV and is expressed as percentage growth, but with actual numbers removed. The Y-axis scale is different on each graph.
- All calculations are done in USD. Global currencies are converted to USD using the conversion rate on the day of the order. These results are not normalized to account for fluctuating exchange rates. Please note that there has been significant volatility in various currencies, such as GBP, which may impact these trends.
Through the course of this series, we’ve highlighted a number of broad categories. Below, we go into more detail on the trends within some of these categories.
Computers/Networking
We had previously called out the “computers/networking” category as one that had seen strong year-over-year growth. That trend continued through the first part of April, as seen in the figure below.
Of the more than 200 subcategories that roll up into this category, we have continued to see demand in those subcategories associated with working/schooling from home. Two of the larger subcategories include laptop and notebook computers, which have experienced significant growth since mid-March. Recently, these subcategories show signs of reverting back toward the average growth rate of the overall category.
Monitors have continued to perform well as people outfit their home offices. A recent phenomenon is a spike in the growth rates of external hard drives since the beginning of April.
Printers have been another important item for some working/schooling at home. Growth in this subcategory started and peaked later than we see above for monitors. Not surprisingly, about two weeks after the growth in printers started to increase, growth in ink/toner sales also started to increase.
Finally, a number of accessories have also seen strong year-over-year growth since the beginning of the year. Sales growth in “headsets” peaked earlier than in the subcategories of “webcams” and “mouse pads/wrist rests.” Note that “headsets” is a larger subcategory in ChannelAdvisor’s aggregate GMV data than the other two subcategories in the figure below.
Health and Beauty
“Health and Beauty” is another category we have highlighted consistently in this blog series. As illustrated below, this category had year-over-year growth that spiked in mid-March. Since that time, growth has declined but has still been running quite a bit ahead of where it was earlier in the year. This category has more than 300 subcategories, several of which we highlight in more depth in this section.
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