The North American e-commerce live streaming market will exceed 25 billion US dollars, and live streaming sales are on the rise!

Nordstrom announced on Wednesday that it will add a Livestream Shopping channel to its e-commerce business , launching livestream shopping, a trend that has been popular in Asia for many years and is now gaining popularity in the United States.

The U.S. live-streaming e-commerce market, while still in its infancy, is expected to surpass $25 billion in sales by 2023, according to Coresight Research.

In China, live-streaming is estimated to drive about $125 billion in sales in 2020, up from $63 billion in 2019, Coresight said.

Nordstro said it will open a "live streaming shopping" channel for the first time, aiming to study e-commerce live streaming , or in layman's terms, live streaming sales.

“We have a lot of opportunities to stay connected with our customers,” Fanya Chandler, a senior vice president at Nordstrom, said in an interview.

Amazon is a North American pioneer in livestreaming shopping . It debuted Amazon Live as a livestream home shopping network in early 2019. Meanwhile, Facebook has focused shopping on its eponymous social media platform and Instagram.

TikTok has teamed up with Walmart to host a shoppable livestream event, allowing users to browse Walmart fashion featured by TikTok creators without leaving the social media app.

“The market is set to see significant growth as more retailers and brands turn to the channel to stay competitive and win customers, ” Deborah Weinswig , principal at Coresight Research , said in a report on the state of live streaming e-commerce in the U.S.

Weinswig added that social media influencers , in particular , are expected to have a greater impact on the shopping behavior of younger consumers.

In the U.S., the market was worth about $6 billion last year and could reach $11 billion by 2021 , the company said. The U.S. live-streaming e-commerce market is expected to exceed $25 billion by 2023 .

Nordstrom's shares are up about 43% year to date . The company has a market capitalization of $7.05 billion, which is larger than Macy's but smaller than Kohl's.

The event is an expansion of the more than 50 virtual events Nordstrom has hosted since last year, during which consumers can shop on the Nordstrom platform and participate in live chats .

The company said the upcoming events will include beauty and fashion experts and brand representatives who will offer tips and tricks of the trade.

In China, more than 560 million consumers watched live-streaming shopping shows last year, and sales are likely to grow by more than 100% to around 9% of China’s e-commerce, according to a recent report by UBS analysts.

UBS analysts said in a report that while live streaming-based e-commerce accounts for only a few billion dollars of U.S. retail sales today, it could grow 10 to 20 times in the next decade .

Brands like Burberry, which has recently begun programming on platforms like Twitch as the pandemic makes offline fashion shows difficult, will continue to fine-tune their shoppable video features. Amazon and QVC are veterans of the medium, with QVC recently bringing its live shopping feature to YouTube.

UBS said that while the trend is likely to accelerate the growth of e-commerce, it will also put smaller brands, smaller retailers and physical stores at a disadvantage.

What Nordstrom brings to this approach is its ability to build its assortment and existing expertise . Already known for its customer service, Nordstrom is using real-time shopping to enable “discovery, personalization and service at scale,” Nordstrom senior vice president Fanya Chandler said in a statement.

“With Livestream Shopping, we can meet the evolving needs and expectations of our customers and equip our team with more tools to deliver on our promise to serve our customers wherever and whenever they shop, ” said Chandler.

Live streaming sales

North America

E-commerce