Today is Brazil’s first ‘Free Shipping Day’

Today is Free Shipping Day in Brazil, and local users have a few more hours to place their orders online. While you are probably familiar with this concept if you live in North America, it is a first for the fast-growing Brazilian e-commerce sector.

It is too early to tell if the one-day operation is a success, but the list of participating retailers is quite long, and includes big names such as Walmart, Dell, Submarino and Netshoes – quite an achievement in a market where logistics remain a challenge.

This initiative is promoted by BuscaDescontos, a discount aggregator which was already responsible for importing ‘Black Friday’ into Brazil – despite the fact that there is no such thing as Thanksgiving in the country.

While importing foreign concepts may seem artificial, it is actually interesting to see that e-commerce players are taking action to modernize this sector and hopefully bring it to international standards.

As we reported, millions of Brazilians are making their first online purchase and are particularly wary of the customer issues which too often plague this sector.

This means that e-retailers will have to actively build trust if they want to foster the ongoing expansion of their sector – according to the research firm e-bit, Brazil’s e-commerce will grow 22% in 2013.