Most Hong Kong SMEs are converts to e-commerce, boding well for city’s transformation

The World Bank estimates that global business to consumer e-commerce sales will reach US$6 trillion by 2024

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A woman using a smartphone and a credit card for shopping online. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 1:16pm, 27 Nov 2024Updated: 5:03pm, 27 Nov 2024

Most of Hong Kong’s small businesses are aware of the benefits of e-commerce, with nine out of 10 believing in the power of websites and online sales tools to boost their revenue, a finding that bodes well for the city’s embrace of financial technology.

Internet-based sales tools can boost revenue by 14.6 per cent over the next two years, particularly as small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) reach customers in mainland China and Southeast Asia, according to a survey of 352 local SMEs conducted by the Hong Kong Export Credit Insurance Corporation (ECIC) and Trade Development Council (TDC).

“E-commerce has become a key driver of the global economy,” said TDC’s deputy executive director Patrick Lau Hui-ping at a media briefing.

Worldwide sales by businesses to consumers (b2c) via e-commerce is likely to balloon to US$6 trillion by 2024, according to an estimate by the World Bank. That surge is led by mainland China, the world’s largest and fastest-growing market, where more than a quarter of retail goods are already transacted online, Lau said.

PCCW Solutions launched a network of automated parcel locker machines across Hong Kong as its last-mile support for e-commerce merchants on June 24, 2015. Photo: Handout

The survey’s finding underscores the transformation underway in Hong Kong’s economy amid a lingering retail slump, as businesses struggle to adjust to the changing consumption habits of visitors and local residents alike. Online retail sales can open up new markets, as Donald Trump is poised to impose import tariffs upon his return to the White House.

“Tariffs will definitely have an impact on Hong Kong and Chinese goods, but this is what we went through during [Trump’s] first presidential term”, Lau said. “Many local SMEs can diversify by using e-commerce, so [they] do not only rely on the US market”.