The field of online commerce continues to break records in Israel. According to Israel Postal Company data, the year 2018 shows that more than 65 million packages ordered from abroad were delivered this year with a total weight of 14,100 tons, compared to 61 million packages delivered from abroad in 2017. This is a significant change in the mix of packages, which grew significantly by 23% compared with the previous year, and about 7% in quantity, as part of a move to more quality shopping on the Internet.

“This year we see a dramatic increase in the weight of items ordered from abroad, and the order of more controlled items and prime items, bigger and more expensive items, even if the increase in orders is relatively moderate compared to previous years, quality vs. quantity. The leading categories in this year’s orders are clothing and footwear, housewares, kitchen accessories, but also gadgets and electronics and computers, and vitamins and cosmetics, where price differentials are still high against Israel.”

“Israel Post is a significant player in the online trading market with the largest retail chain in Israel. Within 3 years we have expanded our delivery system, which now stands at about 1,300 points throughout the country. In the field of sorting we have also improved the customer experience by opening the national online trade center for packages, which can absorb and sort over 100 million items a year, enabling customers to receive the products they ordered quickly and efficiently,” [Israel Post President and CEO Dan] Goldstein noted.

According to Israel Post data, in the year 2018, the sites Ali Express and eBay were the most popular shopping sites among Israelis: followed by Amazon, Next and Asos. It also shows that Ali Express is the leading site in orders, with 50% of orders to Israel being made through it. Amazon, Next and Asos have made the biggest jump among the leading sites this year, with the leading countries coming from China, the United States and the UK.

According to the data, about 43 million packages were delivered in the 20 largest cities, which together number about 4.5 million. Ramat Gan has replaced Carmiel this year and is the leading city in 2018 in ordering packages with respect to population size with 1.9 million packages, with every resident of Ramat Gan ordering 11.46 packages from abroad this year. Petah Tikvah is ranked second with 2.97 million packages, and in third place is Givatayim, which last year did not enter the ranking of the 20 leading cities, and this year 683,000 packages were ordered from abroad.

Tel Aviv continues to lead the list on the quantitative level, and it noted that its residents ordered the most packages in 2018 with 5.1 million packages. With regard to population size, Tel Aviv rose from 19th place last year to 12th place, with every Tel Aviv resident ordering an average of 9.53 packages this year.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)