Lucas Brennan
— Director, Technology & Analytics Infrastructure
May 8, 2024
8 min read
Between 2020 and 2021, U.S. e-commerce grew by 44% in a single year — a decade of projected growth compressed into twelve months. By 2023, e-commerce penetration had retreated toward the pre-COVID trend line. Was the pandemic a catalyst or just a temporary distortion?
44%
e-commerce growth
in the US in 2020 — the largest single-year increase ever recorded
−1.1%
2022 contraction
the first year-over-year e-commerce decline in data history
15.6%
2024 share
e-commerce as a percentage of total retail — near pre-COVID trend line
The evidence increasingly suggests that COVID was a pull-forward event rather than a structural shift. Behaviors adopted out of necessity — grocery delivery, online pharmacy, contactless retail — reverted toward baseline as physical access was restored. The businesses that mistook forced adoption for genuine preference shift over-invested in digital-first infrastructure and are now rationalizing those investments.
Not all COVID-era e-commerce gains were temporary. Three categories show durable structural shifts: buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) behaviors, subscription commerce across consumable categories, and B2B e-commerce adoption which crossed a network-effect threshold during the pandemic and will not revert.
This analysis draws on U.S. Census Bureau quarterly e-commerce data, Shopify merchant cohort data, and FischerJordan proprietary retail analytics.
Lucas Brennan
Director, Technology & Analytics Infrastructure
Published
May 8, 2024
Reading time
8 min read
Topics
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