Brazil is Latin America’s largest retail ecommerce market, so this change in behavior is impacting cross-border ecommerce, namely for merchants selling their goods and services on platforms like AliExpress, as consumers opt to purchase from domestic players in the near term.
As the situation in China slowly improves, merchants selling their products on Alibaba’s marketplaces remained optimistic about business opportunities and consumer usage for the remainder of the year, despite delivery delays, tight cash flows and declines in orders and customers.
“We are constantly monitoring the situation and implementing initiatives to support merchants and small businesses on our platform,” said Ken Huang, head of Latin America for AliExpress at Alibaba Group. “Some deliveries might be affected, but we are working hard to minimize any inconvenience to our customers in Brazil and elsewhere in the region.”
In Argentina, fear and uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus continue to mount. Even before Argentina announced a mandatory quarantine from March 20 through April 12, internet users had quickly started altering their routines and shopping habits.
According to a survey fielded by Kantar between March 12 and 14, 87% of internet users in Argentina ages 18 to 65 said they were buying, or planned to buy, more household cleaning and personal hygiene items. Some 44% of respondents said they were buying, or planned to buy, more items online to avoid going to a physical store.