The COVID-19 pandemic was going to change our consumer habits. That’s what analysts and strategists at leading e-commerce companies thought. The prevailing view was that e-commerce had taken a five-year leap forward during the pandemic. The return to normalcy has been a letdown for these predictions, especially in the U.S.

E-commerce’s share of total U.S. retail sales rose from 11.9% in the first quarter of 2020 to 16.4% in the second quarter of that year, but since then it has been on a steady decline, reaching 14.5% of the total in the second quarter of 2022, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. With the lifting of restrictions, online retail sales are now where they would have been had they continued the growth trend they were showing before the pandemic.

There are several reasons for this return to the past. On the one hand, behavioral experts point out that there is an association with habits: returning to in-person work or college brings with it certain spending habits. There’s also increased spending on services and entertainment. And then there’s inflation: e-commerce may be more convenient, but it isn’t necessarily cheaper. And in the face of rising prices, consumers are being much more careful about the final cost of their purchases.

This trend, however, is not being replicated in Latin America, where the adoption of e-commerce is seen as more permanent. This is due to its relatively low penetration and the emergence of new payment methods that facilitate online purchases among consumers who are outside the traditional banking systems.