E-commerce is now key to the purchase of everyday necessities and is increasingly relevant to most individuals. The crisis has generated an expansion of e-commerce toward new firms, customers, and types of products. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant shift in purchasing habits across the world, accelerating the uptake of e-commerce by approximately five years. It may also be difficult for MSMEs to compete with the products offered by the platforms themselves. Nevertheless, many MSMEs face obstacles accessing these platforms. They can democratise e-commerce by facilitating access to the global market for micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) as well. Platforms facilitate access to market information and reduce transaction costs for consumers. Amazon and Alibaba are the world’s largest e-commerce companies, maintaining enormous market shares.
The most visible interfaces connecting individuals to global flows are digital platforms. Examples of servicification include the provision (service) of a digital wrapper (a set of digital information that is paired to a product when crossing a border, including the information required for global tracking) – and services that are sold to the consumer as a bundle with goods, such as applications that accompany fitness equipment and health trackers. Manufacturing companies increasingly buy, produce, and sell services to complement their wares services are increasingly embedded in manufactured goods. Services such as education and health that were once almost impossible to provide across borders are now considered tradable.Īt the same time, there is growing servicification of global trade, which can be understood as the increasing integration of services with goods. The digitisation of information and the instantaneous internet data flow have also transformed the composition of world trade. Digital flows also underpin and facilitate every other kind of traditional cross-border flow: Even when ships carry physical products, customers increasingly order and pay online. Source: Statista, 2022ĭigitisation is leading to the dematerialisation of products that were previously commercialised as physical objects (such as books, films, games, and recorded music). Volume of data/information created, captured, copied, and consumed worldwide from 2010 to 2025. Data is the raw material from which new services, business models, and value are created. The concomitant increase in the processing power of computers allows more correlations to be seen and more information to be extracted from data than ever before. The digital economy was made possible by two parallel developments: the accelerated speed of digitisation (the conversion of data from analogue to digital form) and the digitalisation of processes known as digital transformation. In the 21st century, global flows are increasingly carried by datagrams – packets of digital information flowing through fibre-optic cables. These flows have been transported in many ways: in ships across oceans, in chariots on ancient highways, in trucks over paved roads, and by cargo planes. Global flows of goods, services, and money have historically underpinned economic and social development.
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