Ecommerce in the Netherlands: €3.63bn in Q1 2014

The Dutch have spent 3.63 billion euros buying products and services online during the first quarter of 2014. The online share of total consumption expenditure is now 22 percent. To be more precise: two in three services are ordered online, while one in nine products is bought online.

This is one of the many results coming from the latest Thuiswinkel Markt Monitor, a research on online consumer expenditure, conducted by GfK, published by the Dutch ecommerce association Thuiswinkel.org and powered by Dutch parcel company PostNL. The research results also show that Dutch consumers together have made almost 26 million online purchases. This means that about 5% of all sales in the total retail industry consisting of products and services took place on the internet. More than three-quarters of these online sales consist of physical products like clothing, consumer electronics and toys. Almost 6 million online sales (23%) consist of services, like event tickets, travel and insurance. When we just look at the amount of money that’s spent during these three months of 2014, the share of services purchased is much bigger: 58%.

Impact of online spending higher than expected
“The latest figures on consumer expenditure show us that the impact of online spending on overall consumer spending is much higher than we previously assumed. The impact and the share of ecommerce on the Dutch economy, aka the e-GDP index, is after the first quarter at 4.83%”, says Wijnand Jongen, president of Dutch online retailer association Thuiswinkel.org.

Dutch consumers spent most of the money they spent online on airplane tickets and accommodations. Most products were being bought in the product category Media & Entertainment, which also includes music downloads and paid apps. Product categories where the online share is the highest are Airplane Tickets & Accommodations and Amusement park tickets & Event tickets.

76% of the Dutch shopped online
Three out of four Dutch people older than 15 years of age have bought at least one product online during the first three months of 2014. This corresponds to 10.5 million online consumers, of whom about 250,000 bought something online for the very first time. The share of the Dutch population that has made an online purchase once has now passed 90 percent.

Of all online consumers ever, 90 percent is (very) happy with online shopping. Dutch consumers love the convenience of ordering products and services online while sitting on the couch at home and the ability to shop online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.