E-commerce has skyrocketed since the declaration of the state of alarm in March 2020.

Even before the pandemic, consumers were increasingly using the online channel to purchase goods and services and this was resulting in increased activity by logistics operators.
Once the state of alarm began, and physical stores were forced to close, consumers switched to the online channel in order to continue buying the products they previously purchased in physical stores.
Published data on total e-commerce sales volume for the second quarter of 2020 (the first quarter marked by the pandemic and hard confinement) showed an increase of +0.2% compared to the same period in 2019.
Although the difference is hardly significant, what has been relevant is the structural change in the goods and services that consumers bought online. Before Covid-19, the leisure sector encompassed almost 40% of online sales (travel agencies, tour operators, air and ground transportation, hotels and similar accommodations, artistic and cinematographic activities, etc.) These services have practically disappeared since the beginning of the pandemic.
On the other hand, other goods and products have had a totally different behavior, with considerable increases if we compare the second quarter of 2020 with the second quarter of 2019: These e-commerce data, beyond their numerical magnitude, teach a structural change: the number of consumers who have accessed the online channel to buy physical goods has increased, which tells us that a part of the physical sales moved to the online channel.
But to better understand the new market paradigm, we need to be able to estimate how much of the physical sales will remain in the cloud and how much will return to physical stores, once the pandemic is under control. To get more clarity on this online/offline binomial, e-commerce sales for the third quarter of 2020 have been analyzed.
Total sales volume increased by 2.5% between July-August compared to the same period in 2019 and transactions exceeded 258 million.
Applying the same analysis as in the second quarter of 2020, separating goods that can be purchased in physical stores, an increase of 56% was observed in this group of the volume sold through the internet.
This percentage is lower when compared to 90% in Q2 2020, and reflects that a portion of purchases of physical goods have returned to the physical channel, but another portion has been channeled through e-commerce.

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