MENA, Africa, Central Europe, and India combined represent only 2.5% of the global e-commerce market, indicating the tremendous growth opportunity in the region.  By focusing on the MENA region, it must be noted in the following:

• MENA e-commerce market grew by 23% in 2015 to reach a total size of $39B, and it’s expected to grow to $51B by 2017.
• The most growth occurred in the UAE with a total size of $10.25B in 2015, followed by KSA, then Egypt.
• Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook are the key social media channels used organically by almost all e-commerce players.
• Almost half of the e-commerce companies surveyed are using Snapchat, and many have only recently started experimenting with the platform.
• Facebook is the most common advertising platform used by marketers with a rate of 92%. Instagram and Twitter are the secondary platforms with rate of 62% and 54%.
• Facebook is capturing about 2/3 of digital ad spend, with significantly smaller being spent on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
• 61% of companies surveyed have a mobile app and another 31% are currently building one.
• Many of the e-commerce companies surveyed do not gather data about their customer’s age and don’t have age-specific strategies or strategies that specifically target Millennials.
• The largest proportion of customers (40%) is Millennials, 20-35 years of age, representing almost 2/3 of the customer base.
• The top challenge that faces e-commerce players surveyed is a consumer education with a rate of 20%, and the top opportunities are improving website experience, followed by leveraging big data.

A Graph Shows The Size of eCommerce Market size in MENA.