Major retailers and suppliers – from Home Depot to Peloton – are under pressure from high transportation and storage costs for expensive items to ship such as appliances, furniture and exercise equipment which are in high demand .

Stores like Walmart, Target, and Amazon.com over the past year have also run out of essentials that are easy to buy in bulk with one click, but difficult to keep in stock.

Driven by demand in the United States, China and Britain, e-commerce sales will total around $ 4.2 trillion this year from $ 3.5 billion in 2020, according to Adobe, which compiles data on direct transactions in more than 80 countries. Online sales of items, from toys and video games to furniture, totaled $ 876 billion in the first quarter of this year.

As vaccines remain scarce and many countries experience new waves of variant-fueled COVID-19 infections, retailers have closed many physical stores while investing heavily in online platforms.

Nike said last month that only 65% ​​of stores in Europe, the Middle East and Africa were open or operating during reduced hours. At the same time, digital sales in its last quarter increased by 60%.

But even as stores reopen, data from Adobe shows that after more than a year of lockdown, people have become accustomed to ordering goods through their laptops or smartphones. The company’s analysis echoes patterns predicted by retailers and suppliers, including Walmart, Kraft Heinz and Mondelez.

This is bad news for businesses that rely on brick-and-mortar stores, which were already in decline due to Amazon.com, Alibaba and other e-commerce giants.

In America, online sales jumped 39% to around $ 200 billion in the first quarter, with growth peaking in the three weeks following President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 relief bill. $ 1.9 trillion.

However, growth has not been as impressive elsewhere, with some countries like Japan – where fewer people have historically shopped online – seeing only modest e-commerce sales.