Executive summary: Australian ecommerce has entered a high-frequency, low-basket phase

The headline number is strong: Australians spent $82.6 billion online in 2025, up 14% from $72.5 billion a year earlier, and online purchases represented roughly 24% of retail spending. A record 9.8 million households shopped online, with 41% doing so at least fortnightly.^[1][2]

But the more important signal sits underneath the growth rate. The average basket fell to $96 in 2025—about $10 below its 2020 level—while the average household bought from 16 retailers and made four more online purchases than a year earlier. The latest 2026 data intensifies that pattern: Australians spent $21.9 billion online in the April–June quarter, again up 14% year on year, while the average basket dropped to a record $90.^[2][3][4]

That divergence is the defining fact of Australian ecommerce in 2026. Consumers have not abandoned online retail under cost-of-living pressure; they have changed how they use it. Ecommerce increasingly functions as a price-discovery, deal-timing and household-budgeting infrastructure. Shoppers compare more, split spend across more merchants, wait for promotions and use marketplaces when assortment and price make the trade-off compelling.

For merchants, this creates a harsher competitive environment. Growth in market demand does not automatically translate into easier growth at the brand level. The same shopper who buys more often is less loyal, sees more comparable offers, has a lower tolerance for opaque delivery costs and can benchmark a generic product against Amazon, Temu, Shein or a retailer marketplace in seconds.

1. Australian ecommerce market size: 2025 reaccelerated—and 2026 has not broken the pattern

After the pandemic surge and the slower normalisation period that followed, Australian ecommerce entered another acceleration phase in 2025. Australia Post, using CommBank iQ transaction data plus BNPL estimation, reports total online spending of $82.6 billion, 14% higher than 2024. Online spending now represents about 24% of all retail spend.^[1][2]

The scale of participation is equally important. 9.8 million households—82% of Australian households—bought online during the year. Forty-one per cent shopped online at least fortnightly. In other words, Australian ecommerce is no longer an adoption story in the conventional sense. It is a mature channel where future growth depends increasingly on frequency, share of wallet, category migration and competitive redistribution rather than simply adding first-time online shoppers.^[1][2]

The April–June 2026 quarter is especially useful because it shows whether the 2025 acceleration was temporary. It was not. Australia Post reports $21.9 billion of quarterly online spend, up 14% year on year and accompanied by 9.3 million shopping households during the quarter.^[3][24]

The macro backdrop makes the result more revealing

Online spending strength sits beside a difficult consumer environment. The RBA cash rate was 4.35% in early August 2026, after 75 basis points of tightening since the beginning of the year. June annual CPI was 3.8%, while the latest available Wage Price Index showed wages up 3.3% over the year to March 2026. These periods are not directly comparable, but together they describe an economy where household budgets remain under pressure rather than one characterised by effortless discretionary spending.^{[6][7][9][25]}

Westpac’s July sentiment reading reinforces that point. Its index rose to 83.9, but pessimism still dominated and family finances remained under pressure.^[8] The apparent paradox—weak confidence but strong ecommerce growth—is one reason raw revenue growth should not be interpreted as a return to carefree consumption.

2. The real growth engine: shoppers are buying more often, not simply spending more per order

Australia Post’s 2026 report describes a market in which the average household bought from 16 different retailers in 2025—more than double the figure a decade earlier—and made four additional online purchases versus the previous year. At the same time, the average basket declined to $96.^[2][4]

By the April–June 2026 quarter, the average basket had fallen further to $90, a record low. Nearly six in ten surveyed shoppers said they never buy full price anymore.^[3] This matters operationally because a high-frequency, low-basket market changes the economics of ecommerce. Payment fees, pick-and-pack costs, postage, returns and customer service are incurred per order, not as a percentage of an abstract annual market total.

Discounting is becoming part of the purchase calendar

Seventy-three per cent of shoppers told Australia Post they wait for sales events, and 81% shop around for the best deal. By Q2 2026, 59% said they never buy full price. The behaviour is especially pronounced among younger shoppers: the annual report says 96% of Gen Z hold out for events such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday.^[1][3]

The risk for retailers is obvious: if a brand teaches customers that the “real” price only appears during promotional periods, full-price conversion deteriorates and margin becomes dependent on discount depth. The answer is not necessarily to discount less; it is to broaden the definition of value. Bundles, warranties, useful content, faster delivery, loyalty benefits, product quality, exclusive specifications and transparent total landed cost can all reduce the need to compete on sticker price alone.

3. Category breakdown: 2025 growth was broad, but not equally attractive

One of the biggest corrections from older Australian ecommerce narratives is that 2025 was not a year where a few categories grew while discretionary retail broadly collapsed. In Australia Post’s full 2026 report, every reported category posted double-digit online spending growth. Books, stationery and multimedia grew fastest at 24.1%, while online marketplaces remained the largest merchant class at $18.9 billion.^[2]

Taxonomy warning: “Online marketplaces” is a merchant/channel class, not a product vertical. Australia Post says its $18.9b figure covers pure marketplaces such as Amazon and Temu and excludes retailer-owned marketplaces such as Big W Market and Kmart Marketplace. It should not be added to product categories as though the categories are mutually exclusive.^[2]

What the category data says beyond the ranking

Food and liquor is now a major digital habit. At $16.0 billion and 14% growth, grocery-related ecommerce is no longer a niche convenience. Yet category-specific Australia Post data suggests online penetration in food and grocery still has room to grow, which makes fulfilment density, subscriptions and repeat-order convenience particularly important.^[2][3]

Consumer electronics remains structurally ecommerce-friendly. The category generated $9.2 billion online and grew 16%. High product comparability, reviews, specifications and price transparency favour online research, but those same characteristics make it difficult to preserve margin without service, availability, bundles or differentiated product configurations.^[2]

Fashion grew despite value pressure. Fashion and apparel reached $11.6 billion, up 11.5%. That does not mean fashion escaped pressure: Australia Post’s quarterly update still describes increasingly deliberate, promotion-aware shoppers. For brands, the strategic question is less whether consumers will buy fashion online and more whether unit economics survive returns, discounts, creator acquisition costs and marketplace comparison.^[2][3]

Small categories can grow faster than large ones. Books, stationery and multimedia grew 24.1%, department stores 19.5% and hobbies/recreational goods 17.1%. Growth percentage should therefore be separated from absolute revenue pool when retailers assess opportunity.

4. Generational ecommerce: Millennials spend the most, but older Australians are still moving online

Millennials were Australia’s largest online spending cohort in 2025 at $29.7 billion, followed by Gen X at $22.7 billion. But the fastest annual growth came from Builders (+16.9%) and Baby Boomers (+14.8%).^[1][2]

Millennials also allocate the highest share of their total retail expenditure online—28.5%—while Gen Z sits at 25.5% and Gen X at 23.9%. This is a more useful measure than treating “young people” as a single ecommerce segment: Millennials combine digital maturity with larger household spending power, making them the central commercial cohort for many categories.^[2]

The basket data complicates assumptions further. Gen X had the highest average online basket at $105.84, followed by Boomers at $104.45, while Gen Z averaged $81.15. Only Builders recorded positive basket growth in 2025. Older customers therefore matter not just as an adoption-growth story but because they can bring materially larger order values.^[2]

Segmentation should follow buying jobs, not stereotypes

Generational labels are useful for broad planning, but they can become lazy marketing shortcuts. A better execution model is to combine age cohort with product category, shopping mission and risk perception. A Gen Z shopper buying a $30 accessory behaves differently from the same person buying a $1,500 laptop; a Boomer buying groceries behaves differently from a Boomer buying a refurbished phone.

The practical lesson is to use cohort data to choose messaging and channel priorities, then optimise around observed behaviour: discount sensitivity, delivery preference, repeat interval, return propensity, basket composition and product-research depth.

5. Geography: scale sits in the east, but the fastest growth came from Western Australia

New South Wales remained the largest state by online spend in Australia Post’s downloadable report at $26.4 billion, followed by Victoria ($20.0b) and Queensland ($17.8b). Western Australia grew fastest at 18% year on year, ahead of Queensland at 15%.^[2]

Regional ecommerce is also economically significant. Capital-city households accounted for $61.9 billion of spend, inner regional areas $13.8 billion and outer regional/rural/remote areas $6.8 billion. The outer regional and remote group grew fastest at 14.4%, slightly ahead of capital cities at 13.8%.^[2]

For merchants, this is not an argument to “target regional Australia” as a single segment. It is an argument to model delivery promises and economics by postcode. A product that converts well in Sydney may become unattractive when freight surcharges, delivery time or return logistics are applied to remote areas. Conversely, categories with limited local physical assortment can have a stronger online proposition outside metropolitan markets.

6. Marketplaces are no longer just sales channels—they are resetting the consumer’s reference price

Australians spent $18.9 billion on pure online marketplaces in 2025, up 13%, according to Australia Post. The report says that represents 23% of total online spending under its merchant classification. In the Apr–Jun 2026 quarter, marketplaces generated $5.1 billion and accounted for 42% of online transactions, with transaction activity growing 17% year on year.^[2][3][24]

It is important not to confuse these metrics. The 23% figure is a spending measure for Australia Post’s “pure marketplace” merchant class; the 42% figure is a share of online transactions in the latest quarter. They describe different denominators.

Independent Roy Morgan research makes the disruption more concrete. In 2025, Temu reached 5.0 million Australian shoppers, up 17% year on year; Shein reached 2.9 million, up 28%; and Amazon added roughly 500,000 shoppers, a 6% increase from a much larger base. Roy Morgan estimates Amazon, Temu and Shein together generated close to $12 billion in Australian retail sales in 2025.^[10]

The strategic shift: product discovery has moved closer to the factory gate

The old importing model could rely on information asymmetry. A retailer found a product overseas, imported it, merchandised it locally and applied a markup that reflected sourcing effort, inventory risk, marketing and retail overhead. That model still works when the retailer adds real value—but global marketplaces have made the underlying product universe radically more visible to consumers.

When an Australian shopper can image-search, compare specifications, read thousands of reviews and find visually identical goods at a fraction of the local price, “we found it first” is not a moat. Roy Morgan’s analysis reaches a similar conclusion: ultra-low-price platforms are resetting consumers’ reference prices, putting particular pressure on retailers caught between clear price leadership and genuine brand differentiation.^[10]

7. The marketplace trust tax: range expansion can create a customer-experience liability

Price and trust are not moving in the same direction. Roy Morgan’s March 2026 Risk Monitor ranked Temu as Australia’s third most distrusted brand, even as its shopper base was rapidly expanding. Shein also sat among the most distrusted brands. This is a useful reminder that consumers can transact with a platform because of price, novelty or assortment while still holding reservations about quality, ethics, data practices or reliability.^[11]

That creates an opening for established Australian retailers—but also a trap. Retailer-owned marketplaces allow brands to add huge assortments without carrying inventory. Australia Post explicitly describes the model as capital-light, but also notes the risks of intense competition, margin pressure and limited brand control.^[2]

Qualitative evidence from Australian online communities shows the customer-side friction. A June 2026 r/australia thread about marketplace listings on major retailer websites attracted thousands of votes and complaints centred on unclear seller responsibility, product quality, warranty expectations, search clutter and the difficulty of finding items actually stocked by the retailer. In August, another user built a browser extension specifically to hide marketplace listings across several major Australian retailer sites. These discussions are anecdotal, not representative survey data, but they reveal a coherent pain point worth testing in first-party customer research.^[21]

Retailers that run marketplaces should therefore treat seller curation and post-purchase accountability as brand-governance functions, not just platform operations. Useful controls include clear marketplace badges, “sold by / fulfilled by” prominence, consistent return paths, product-safety documentation, seller performance thresholds and a default filter for locally stocked or retailer-sold products when that is the shopper’s intent.

8. Digital discovery in 2026: mobile payments are mature, social drives demand, AI is becoming a product-data problem

Online payments continue to move into mobile apps

The Reserve Bank’s 2025 Consumer Payments Survey, published in May 2026, provides a cleaner view of digital behaviour than generic website-traffic benchmarks. Online payments represented 20% of consumer payments in 2025, up from 18% in 2022 and 4% in 2007. Mobile/app payments accounted for 46% of online payments, up from 37% in 2022. Across all consumer payments, debit cards represented 49% and credit/charge cards 23%.^[5]

The commercial implication is less about “mobile-first” as a slogan and more about eliminating transaction friction where shoppers already are: saved credentials, wallet support, clear shipping costs, autofill, fast account creation and checkout flows that do not require desktop-style form filling.

BNPL note: The RBA says PayPal and BNPL were omitted from the 2025 Consumer Payments Survey. We therefore do not use the survey to claim a 2025 BNPL payment share. Separately, Australia’s legal framework changed in June 2025, bringing BNPL contracts into the credit licensing regime.^[5][12]

Social media is now part of product discovery infrastructure

Australia Post reports that 60% of Australian shoppers use social media for product discovery and one in two have bought something after seeing it on social media.^[4] This shifts the content job from “brand awareness” toward product education, proof and comparison. Short-form demos, creator reviews, before-and-after evidence, use cases and FAQs can all reduce uncertainty before the shopper reaches a product page.

AI adoption is real; autonomous purchasing is not yet mainstream

Australia Post reports 62% of shoppers use AI and 32% already use it for shopping advice. Yet enthusiasm for agentic commerce is much lower: only 16% of shoppers are advocates, compared with 44% of businesses, even though 85% of businesses say they are taking steps to prepare.^[1][2]

The sensible 2026 response is not to redesign the entire business around autonomous agents. It is to improve product-data quality in ways that help both humans and machines: exact dimensions, materials, compatibility, variants, stock status, shipping timing, warranty, returns, certifications, structured FAQs and unambiguous pricing. These are useful for Google, marketplaces, LLM recommendations and future agents at the same time.

9. Delivery is now part of the conversion proposition—and smaller baskets make the economics harder

Australia Post reports that 73% of shoppers are more likely to shop online when they have a good delivery experience, 69% want multiple delivery options at checkout, and 70% say poor delivery communication at checkout makes them less likely to complete a purchase.^[4][15]

Those preferences matter more when shoppers are less loyal. With the average household buying from 16 retailers annually, a delivery failure does not merely create a support ticket—it makes switching easy.^[4][15]

The unit-economics squeeze is becoming more visible

From 1 July 2026, Australia Post increased Parcel Post retail prices by an average of 4.95%, with MyPost Business pickup services increasing 9.7%. At the same time, the latest ecommerce basket fell to $90.^[16][3] A smaller order therefore carries a larger proportional fulfilment burden unless merchants improve packaging, zone strategy, carrier mix, pick efficiency or basket-building.

Reddit discussions among Australian micro and small businesses repeatedly raise postage as a constraint on low-value products, including examples where shipping approaches or exceeds the value of the item. Again, these anecdotes do not establish national prevalence, but they illustrate why low-AOV categories often need bundling, subscriptions, minimum-order thresholds, local delivery, lockers or 3PL/carrier optimisation rather than simply passing a flat shipping charge to the customer.^[23]

What good delivery design looks like

10. Recommerce: the demand is ahead of retailer supply

Second-hand ecommerce is moving from peer-to-peer behaviour into a retailer opportunity. Australia Post reports 46% of Australians buy second-hand goods annually, while 73% of online shoppers are interested in buying pre-loved or refurbished goods directly from retailers. Yet only 14% of businesses currently sell or partner to sell second-hand/refurbished goods, and 13% offer trade-in or buy-back programs.^[2][4]

The gap is strategically interesting because retailers can solve problems that peer-to-peer markets struggle with: authenticity, grading, warranty, payment protection, standardised returns and reliable fulfilment. For electronics, tools, furniture, baby products and other durable categories, recommerce can also create a lifecycle relationship that starts before the next new-product purchase.

But the opportunity is category-dependent. Safety-critical, hygiene-sensitive or heavily regulated goods require tighter controls. Retailers should not add recommerce because sustainability language is fashionable; they should identify products where residual value, inspection economics and customer trust make the model work.

11. Regulation is moving closer to the ecommerce operating model

BNPL is now regulated credit

From 10 June 2025, entities engaging in BNPL credit activities generally need an Australian credit licence with appropriate authorisations. The reform brings BNPL contracts into the National Credit Code framework, with modified responsible-lending obligations for low-cost credit contracts.^[12]

For merchants, the immediate effect is less about becoming credit experts and more about vendor governance: payment partners, disclosures, marketing language and checkout implementation now sit within a more regulated environment than the early BNPL growth era.

Product safety in digital markets is an explicit ACCC priority

In June 2026, the ACCC strengthened the Australian Product Safety Pledge with major marketplaces. Temu and Gumtree joined Amazon Australia, eBay Australia and AliExpress in commitments that go beyond current legal requirements, with annual performance reporting. For 2026–27, the ACCC lists unsafe consumer goods and manipulative or false practices in digital markets among its product-safety priorities.^[13][14]

This is directly relevant to importers. Product compliance is not a border-only problem and not something that can be delegated away by buying from a supplier that claims “Australian standard”. Retailers need to know which mandatory standards apply, what test evidence exists, whether the tested sample is the same as the production item, how changes are controlled and who carries traceability records.

12. What Australian ecommerce trends mean for businesses sourcing from China

China remains structurally central to Australian imports. ABS data shows Australia imported $130.2 billion in goods and services from China in 2025, up 12.5%, making China the country’s largest import partner. DFAT puts total two-way Australia–China goods and services trade at $326 billion in 2025.^[17][18]

But the ecommerce opportunity for Australian importers is changing. Access to Chinese manufacturing is no longer scarce information. Temu, Shein, AliExpress, Amazon sellers, sourcing platforms and image search have exposed consumers to factory-adjacent assortments and prices. The competitive advantage therefore shifts from access to execution.

The old playbook: find a generic product, add a logo, mark it up

That model is most vulnerable in 2026. Australian consumers discussing Temu and Shein on Reddit repeatedly make the same complaint: local retailers sometimes appear to sell products that look identical to marketplace goods at much higher prices. One highly upvoted AusFinance discussion framed the desired alternative bluntly—better quality rather than the same imports with a large markup. This is anecdotal evidence, but it aligns closely with Roy Morgan’s finding that the mid-market is being squeezed by ultra-low reference prices.^[22][10]

The stronger playbook: move differentiation upstream

Australia’s import rules also create a structural difference between direct-to-consumer low-value shipments and commercial importing. ABF says goods valued at A$1,000 or less generally attract no duties, taxes or charges at the border (though GST may be collected at the point of sale), while goods over A$1,000 require an import declaration and can attract duties, taxes and processing charges. Electronic import processing charges are currently $50 for consignments over $1,000 and under $10,000, and $152 for consignments of $10,000 or more, before applicable biosecurity charges.^[19][20]

That does not mean local importers cannot compete. It means they need to monetise what bulk local inventory can do better: faster delivery, curated quality, compliance confidence, customer service, bundling, warranties, returns, branded experience and products built for Australian use rather than simply available to Australian buyers.

13. OPL forecast: Australian ecommerce is on track to pass A$100 billion in 2027

Historical data tells us where ecommerce has been. Retailers making inventory, technology and channel decisions need a view of where the market could go next. We therefore built an OPL scenario model for 2026–2033 rather than importing a third-party market-size forecast.

The model is intentionally simple enough to audit. It treats nominal online spending as the product of two drivers:

For the 2025 base year, Australia Post reports $82.6 billion online and a 24% online share. That implies an in-scope retail spending pool of about $344.2 billion. This is a model denominator derived from the Australia Post/CommBank iQ dataset; it should not be confused with an ABS measure of total household consumption or total economy-wide retail activity.^[1][2]

Why we did not run a simple regression through old annual headlines

Australia Post's published series has undergone methodology and data revisions. Its 2025 report measured 2024 online spend at $69 billion, while the 2026 report gives a revised 2024 comparator of $72.5 billion. Australia Post itself notes that methodology and data-quality changes can create variance between reports. A mechanical regression through unreconciled annual headlines would therefore manufacture precision from a changing series.^[2][28]

Instead, we anchor the model to the latest internally consistent 2025 dataset, check the near-term direction against the April–June 2026 quarterly result, and use macroeconomic forecasts only as directional constraints rather than pretending they are ecommerce forecasts.

The assumptions behind the model

The RBA's May 2026 Statement on Monetary Policy—the latest full forecast available before this report's 8 August publication date—expects real household consumption growth of 1.9% through December 2026, 1.7% through December 2027 and 1.6% through June 2028. It forecasts CPI inflation at 4.0% at December 2026, 2.4% at December 2027 and 2.5% at June 2028. Those figures imply a nominal household-spending environment that should slow substantially from the recent ecommerce growth rate, even before allowing for differences between household consumption and retail spending.^[26]

Our base case therefore assumes the in-scope nominal retail pool grows 5.5% in 2026, 4.2% in 2027, 4.1% in 2028, then tapers from 3.7% in 2029 toward 3.1% by 2033. That convergence is intentional: Australia Post's long-range outlook expects retail to return to roughly its historical 3% annual growth trend, so the base case does not rely on unusually strong aggregate retail growth to reach its ecommerce milestones. The model simultaneously assumes ecommerce penetration rises from 24.0% in 2025 to 25.5% in 2026, 30.2% in 2030 and 33.3% in 2033. The long-run endpoint is deliberately anchored close to Australia Post's earlier structural forecast that around one in three retail dollars could be spent online by 2033.^[27]

The downside case assumes weaker nominal retail growth and a slower channel shift, reaching 31.0% online penetration by 2033. The upside case assumes stronger nominal spending and faster migration to ecommerce, reaching 35.5% penetration by 2033. These are scenario boundaries, not confidence intervals.

What the forecast actually says

Our central case puts Australian online spending at about $92.6 billion in 2026, a 12.1% increase on the 2025 base. That is deliberately below the 14% YoY pace recorded in the April–June 2026 quarter because the RBA expects household consumption momentum to weaken. The upside case, at $94.1 billion, is roughly what happens if the current quarterly pace proves more durable.^[24][26]

The more consequential milestone is A$100 billion. In the base case, Australia crosses it in 2027, at roughly $101.4 billion. The upside case also crosses in 2027; the downside case does so in 2028. By 2030, the central estimate reaches $127.7 billion, around 55% above 2025. By 2033 it reaches $154.7 billion, with one-third of the modelled retail pool online.

This is nominal spending, not unit volume. Inflation, product mix and price changes can lift dollar expenditure without an equivalent increase in items sold. Merchants should therefore avoid reading a $129 billion 2030 market as evidence that every category will enjoy comparable real demand growth.

More than half of the central-case growth to 2030 comes from channel migration

The model is useful because it separates a growing retail economy from a growing ecommerce share. If the modelled retail pool reached $422.7 billion in 2030 but ecommerce penetration stayed frozen at 24%, online spending would be only about $101.5 billion. Raising penetration to the base-case 30.2% lifts the forecast to $127.7 billion.

On that sequential decomposition, about $18.9 billion of the increase from 2025 to 2030 comes from expansion in the underlying nominal retail pool and about $26.2 billion comes from a larger share of that pool moving online. In other words, roughly 58% of the central-case increase is a channel-share story rather than simply a bigger consumer economy.

That matters strategically. The most important long-run opportunity is not waiting for Australian households to become dramatically richer. It is winning a larger share of spending that was going to happen anyway as discovery, comparison, payment and fulfilment continue moving online.

What we deliberately do not forecast

We do not publish point forecasts for average basket size, marketplace market share, category revenue or AI-led transaction share. The public series are either too short, definitionally unstable or based on non-comparable methodologies to justify precise multi-year numbers. Those variables are treated as leading indicators and scenario drivers instead. A forecast becomes less useful, not more useful, when every available statistic is extrapolated.

What would make us revise the forecast

A research-firm-style forecast should identify its failure conditions. We would update the model materially if any of the following persist for more than one or two quarters:

• Online spending growth: a sustained move below roughly 7% or above roughly 15% YoY would pull the near-term scenarios lower or higher.
• Ecommerce penetration: evidence that online share is no longer gaining at least around one percentage point a year would weaken the 2030–33 case.
• Average basket versus order frequency: if basket sizes stabilise while transaction frequency stays strong, nominal spend could outperform; a simultaneous fall in both would be a clear downside signal.
• Household consumption and inflation: materially weaker real consumption or more persistent inflation than the RBA path would pressure discretionary demand and alter nominal-versus-real growth.^[26]
• Marketplace and AI-driven discovery: faster adoption could accelerate online share without requiring stronger aggregate consumption; conversely, regulation, trust failures or logistics disruption could slow it.

Forecast confidence

14. The 2026–27 strategic playbook for Australian ecommerce merchants

The data does not support a single “winning channel”. It supports a portfolio of capabilities that reduce dependence on any one source of traffic or margin. The following priorities are the ones we believe follow most directly from the evidence.

Methodology: what this report measures—and what it deliberately does not

This report is an Ocean Port Link synthesis of publicly available research, government data and industry reporting. We did not conduct a proprietary consumer panel and therefore do not present our own market estimates as observed facts. Where we interpret multiple datasets, that interpretation is labelled.

Primary market dataset

Australia Post’s 2026 eCommerce Report is the primary source for 2025 online spend, category, generation, geography, delivery, recommerce and AI survey data. Its spending estimates use CommBank iQ electronic banking transaction data, including debit and credit card transactions, BPAY and direct debit, with BNPL estimation. Australia Post notes that methodological and data-quality changes can create variance between reports.^[2]

2026 current pulse

Because full-year 2026 has not occurred, we use Australia Post’s FY26 Q4 update for April–June 2026 and pair it with 2026 macroeconomic, payment and regulatory releases available by 8 August. We do not annualise the $21.9b quarterly figure into a “2026 market size” because seasonality would make that misleading.^[3]

Forecast methodology

The OPL forecast is a scenario model, not observed data and not an econometric claim of causal precision. Starting with the latest internally consistent Australia Post 2025 base, we model the in-scope nominal retail spending pool and ecommerce penetration separately, then multiply the two. RBA household-consumption and inflation forecasts constrain the near-term nominal spending assumptions; Australia Post's earlier one-in-three-dollars-online-by-2033 forecast provides a long-run penetration anchor. Full assumptions and scenario outputs are published in the forecast section and accompanying model file.^[26][27]

We deliberately do not fit a time-series regression across unreconciled Australia Post annual reports because the 2025 and 2026 publications use different historical bases for 2024.^[28]

Marketplace datasets are not interchangeable

Australia Post’s $18.9b figure is its “pure online marketplace” merchant class. Roy Morgan’s Amazon/Temu/Shein sales figures are independent survey-based estimates. We present both because they answer different questions, but we do not divide one by the other and call the result market share.^[2][10]

State data discrepancy

The Australia Post web landing page displays NSW online spending of $28.5b, while the downloadable report state table reports $26.4b. We use the PDF table figure and flag the discrepancy rather than conceal it.^[1][2]

What we excluded after fact-checking

Qualitative sources

Reddit discussions are used only to surface pain points and language that may be missed in aggregate datasets. They are not representative surveys and are never used to estimate prevalence.

FAQ: Australian ecommerce in 2026

How big is ecommerce in Australia in 2026?

The latest complete annual figure is $82.6b of online spend in calendar 2025, published in the Australia Post eCommerce Report 2026. For Apr–Jun 2026, Australia Post reported $21.9b of online spend. A complete full-year 2026 total is not yet available.

What percentage of Australian retail spending is online?

Australia Post estimates online spending represented roughly 24% of Australian retail spend in 2025.

What is the biggest ecommerce category in Australia?

Australia Post’s largest merchant class is pure online marketplaces at $18.9b in 2025. Among product-oriented categories in its report, food and liquor was $16.0b, followed by fashion and apparel at $11.6b and home and garden at $11.4b.

Which generation spends the most online in Australia?

Millennials were the largest cohort in 2025, spending $29.7b online and allocating 28.5% of their total retail spending to online channels.

Are Australian ecommerce baskets getting bigger or smaller?

Smaller. The average basket was $96 in 2025 and fell to a record $90 in the Apr–Jun 2026 quarter, while overall online spending continued to grow.

Are Temu and Shein still growing in Australia?

Yes. Roy Morgan reported 5.0m Temu shoppers in 2025, up 17%, and 2.9m Shein shoppers, up 28%. Roy Morgan estimated 2025 retail sales of about $3.0b for Temu and $1.9b for Shein.

What is OPL forecasting for Australian ecommerce?

Our base case estimates nominal online spending of about $92.6b in 2026, $101.4b in 2027, $127.7b in 2030 and $154.7b in 2033. These are scenario-model outputs, not observed facts. The base case assumes online share rises from 24% in 2025 to about 33.3% in 2033.

What should Australian retailers sourcing from China do differently?

Move beyond generic product selection. The strongest defence against marketplace price comparison is differentiated specification, quality control, compliance, packaging, local availability, evidence, warranty and service—advantages that are difficult to replicate with a visually identical commodity product.

Sources