Amazon, Shein and Zalando gained ground since the pandemic, while eBay, Wish and AliExpress declined.

U.S. retailers account for only 10% of cross-border purchases, compared to 15% in 2016.

Apparel and footwear is the category most commonly purchased from a retail website in another country, followed by consumer electronics and personal care.

U.S.-based Amazon.com Inc. and China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. remain the global leaders in cross-border ecommerce, but the U.S. and China have lost market share to other countries in recent years, according to the latest survey of cross-border online shopping from the International Post Corporation, a consortium of national postal services.

Asked where they made their last purchase from a retail website outside their home country, 27% of consumers said Amazon while 17% cited Alibaba’s AliExpress marketplace, which mainly offers inexpensive goods from Chinese manufacturers. The results are based on an October 2022 survey of 33,009 consumers in 39 countries who had made at least one cross-border online purchase in the previous three months.

Amazon’s share ticked up from 25% in the similar survey IPC conducted in 2019, the last year before the COVID-19 pandemic struck. AliExpress was down slightly from 20% in the 2019 survey.

Source: Amazon and Alibaba lead in cross-border ecommerce