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E-commerce makes it possible to order and sell goods and services through digital systems, changing how businesses reach buyers and how transactions are organized. Its scale is substantial, but sales totals do not show how much new economic value was created or prove that e-commerce caused growth in GDP, productivity, jobs, or living standards.
What counts as e-commerce—and what the figures measure
“E-commerce” can refer to online retail, business-to-business orders, or wider measures of digitally ordered trade. These measures overlap, but they are not interchangeable. The IMF, OECD, UNCTAD, and WTO define digital trade as “all international trade that is digitally ordered and/or digitally delivered.” That definition concerns international trade; it does not make all domestic e-commerce part of digital trade. The second edition of the Handbook on Measuring Digital Trade explains the framework.
| Measure | What it covers | What it does not establish |
|---|---|---|
| Business e-commerce sales | Sales made by businesses through digital ordering, including business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions. | By itself, it does not show the value added to the economy or the resulting change in GDP. |
| Online retail | A subset of B2C e-commerce: consumer purchases made online. | It is not a proxy for all e-commerce; it excludes B2B sales and other business transactions. |
| Digitally ordered trade | International trade in which an order is placed through digital networks. | It does not necessarily mean the product or service is delivered digitally. |
| Digitally delivered trade | International trade in goods or services delivered digitally, such as certain online services. | It is a delivery-mode measure, not a total of all online sales. |
Sales value records the price of transactions. GDP, by contrast, measures value added: broadly, the value produced minus the value of intermediate inputs. A sale can include inputs and work already counted elsewhere in the economy, so adding sales totals is not the same as measuring new output.
How large is business e-commerce?
UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) reports that business e-commerce sales across 45 developed and developing economies reached $28 trillion in 2024. Together, those economies represent three quarters of global GDP and exports, but the figure is not a complete count of all worldwide e-commerce. Coverage also varies by economy and statistical source. UNCTAD’s data insight on e-commerce growth provides the 2024 estimate.
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In a comparable UNCTAD series covering 36 economies, sales value was 4.4% higher in 2024 than in 2023. That is growth in the measured value of transactions; it is not an inflation-adjusted measure of output, productivity, or consumer welfare. It should not be read as a 4.4% increase in the economy’s contribution from e-commerce.
An earlier UNCTAD technical note estimated business e-commerce sales in 43 economies at nearly $25 trillion in 2021 and almost $27 trillion in 2022. It estimated digitally ordered exports from those economies at about $2.5 trillion in 2021—about 13% of their goods and services exports—but warned that this cross-border estimate was relatively uncertain because data were limited. Those estimates have different years and coverage from the later 2024 figures. UNCTAD’s technical note on business e-commerce sales and online platforms describes the earlier estimates.
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Most measured e-commerce is business-to-business and domestic
It is easy to picture e-commerce as consumers buying from overseas websites. The measured business-sales totals tell a broader story: in most economies covered by UNCTAD’s technical note, B2B sales make up the majority, and most transactions take place within the same economy. Cross-border online shopping is only one part of the picture.
B2B ordering can change how companies find suppliers, negotiate orders, and coordinate fulfillment. Domestic transactions can also help businesses sell through digital channels without crossing a national border. Neither pattern, on its own, shows whether a transaction replaced an existing sale, created additional demand, lowered costs, or shifted business from one seller to another.
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How e-commerce can affect economic activity
Market access and matching
Digital platforms can make products visible to buyers beyond a seller’s immediate area and help match supply with demand. That may give some businesses new ways to find customers or suppliers. The measurement handbook describes platforms as playing an increasingly important role in matching supply and demand and facilitating transactions. This is a potential economic channel, not an estimate of the net gains it produces.
Ordering, sales, and trade
Digital ordering can change the way businesses receive and fulfill orders, including across borders. If it reduces friction or helps firms reach buyers they could not serve before, it may support additional activity. But order value alone cannot tell whether those sales are new, whether costs fell, or how gains were split among platforms, businesses, workers, and customers. Cross-border digitally ordered trade is also less completely measured than domestic business sales.
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Consumer and business effects
Online purchasing may make it easier to compare products or buy from sellers outside a local market; digital systems may also make some business transactions more convenient. Whether those changes improve welfare depends on outcomes such as prices, quality, choice, time saved, access, and the costs borne by consumers and sellers. The sales statistics above do not quantify those effects.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What enables wider participation—and what can hold it back?
Digital access alone does not guarantee that firms or communities can participate on equal terms. A joint report by the IMF, OECD, UNCTAD, World Bank, and WTO identifies digital infrastructure, skills, capacity building, and the regulatory environment as important policy areas. It also addresses cross-border data flows, competition, and consumer protection. These are conditions and policy concerns—not measured proof that any one intervention causes a particular economic result. The report, Digital Trade for Development, sets out these issues.
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Access to reliable connectivity, the ability to use digital tools, and suitable business capacity can affect who is able to sell or buy online. Rules governing competition, data, and consumer protection can shape how digital markets operate. The evidence cited here does not quantify the separate contribution of each condition, or establish that the benefits of online commerce are distributed evenly among businesses, workers, regions, and consumers.
What the growth figures do—and do not—say about development
Across UNCTAD’s available sample of developing economies, average annual business e-commerce sales growth was almost twice that of developed economies over 2016–2024. This is a sample finding, not a universal pattern across every country. UNCTAD also cautions that e-commerce value statistics are limited, especially for developing economies, so the growth comparison should not be treated as a direct measure of development gains.
A separate trade measure offers context about digital services, but it must not be added to business e-commerce sales as if the two statistics described the same market. Digitally deliverable services accounted for 56% of global services exports in 2025, compared with 15% in least developed countries, according to UNCTAD. These figures describe the share of services exports that can be delivered digitally, not the value of all e-commerce sales. UNCTAD’s digitally deliverable trade insight reports the figures.
What remains uncertain about GDP, productivity, jobs, and welfare?
The cited sources do not establish one current, globally comparable causal effect of e-commerce on GDP, productivity, employment, wages, or welfare. A larger sales total may reflect more transactions, changes in prices, activity moving from offline channels to online ones, or a mix of these. It does not reveal how much additional value was produced or who benefited.
UNCTAD says better e-commerce statistics are needed to understand the sector’s contributions to GDP, employment, and development and to support evidence-based policymaking. Until measures capture those outcomes more directly, transaction-value figures are useful indicators of scale and change in measured sales—not proof of a particular macroeconomic benefit. UNCTAD’s note on measuring the value of e-commerce discusses the measurement challenge.
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