Araucanía, Valparaíso, and the Atacama lead the increases at the national level in Chile in e-commerce.
A study by the logistic software company Beetrack analyzed the demand for e-commerce in Chile’s regions. The company observed a boom in the communes outside the Metropolitan Region, as a result of the preventive quarantines that the authority set throughout the country during much of 2020, due to the pandemic.
The regions of La Araucanía, Valparaíso and Atacama, were those that presented the highest growth at the country level in dispatch orders, where demand reached 337%, 320%, and 311%, respectively, compared to 2019.
All the areas of the country analyzed in the report presented favorable data in their relationship with e-commerce: Los Ríos, 275%; RM 252%; Biobío 243%; Antofagasta 216%; Los Lagos 195%; Coquimbo 189%; Arica and Parinacota 188%; Liberator Bernardo O’Higgins 183%; Tarapacá 153; Maule 140%; and Ñuble 129%.
Sebastián Ojeda, CEO of Beetrack, explains that when analyzing the volume of dispatches by region, a transversal increase has been observed in all areas of the territory, and this can be explained by the strengthening of the digital channel around all of Chile, where a large part of retailers, many SMEs included, have had to resort to and enhance the digital channel to stay active and competitive.
Likewise, the convenience provided by electronic commerce, of accessing all kinds of goods directly at home, is changing the relationship between business and customer. In this regard, the pandemic is modifying behaviors in a profound and long-term way, since these new consumption habits are no longer necessarily found only in large cities, or among certain socioeconomic or age groups.
Along the same lines, the study also collects and interprets data corresponding to the behavior of smaller towns in regions, which shows a very noticeable strengthening in these areas of e-commerce platforms, leaving even several regional capitals lagging. In theory, they have better facilities and a more developed “technological culture”.
With an increase of up to 873% concerning 2019, the commune of La Cruz in the Valparaíso region, for example, was the one with the highest percentage demand per office in 2020. Other locations with outstanding performance were Tomé in Biobío with 543%; Melipilla of the Metropolitan Region with 536% and Los Vilos in Coquimbo with 387%.
Ojeda emphasized that the new disruptive technologies around online sales are empowering and bringing companies of all sizes closer to their customers, which in a certain way is allowing the democratization of e-commerce, as companies increasingly invest more in platforms of innovation, vehicles, and other inputs to position itself in their markets as omnichannel. At the same time, although the companies with the longest travel have been focused on the main cities, today we see that that has changed since there is a social role in between to better supply these less densified areas ”, emphasizes Sebastián Ojeda.
The explosion of e-commerce in our country and particularly in the regions, due to contingency, has strengthened digital literacy. The OECD in 2019 reported that Chile suffered in 42% of its population without basic knowledge in digital issues, worrisome figures, but that today thanks to various public and private initiatives it has drastically decreased. Today, e-commerce is only continuing to move in the direction in which the first world is moving: towards digitization.
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