Germany is ‘the clear continental ecommerce leader’

With more than 41 million digital buyers last year and a predicted 46 million in three years, Germany enjoys the greatest ecommerce customer potential within Europe, ‘making it the clear continental leader’, says Germany Trade & Invest in its report ‘The E-Commerce Market in Germany’. “Beyond Europe, only China, the USA, and Japan record higher digital consumer numbers.”

Ecommerce in Germany generated turnover of €27.6bn in 2012 and it’s predicted that the German ecommerce volume will grow by around 21 percent in 2013. The increasing popularity of smartphones and tablets can be sees as a reason for this growth, as we’ve read in the report (pdf).

German ecommerce stores are not only growing domestically, there are also expanding beyond their home country. Almost 90% of the surveyed e-retailers sell to shoppers internationally, while 43% of those that don’t sell outside Germany are working on expanding their services across the borders.

Germany: biggest market in Europe
“As the biggest market in Europe (both in population and internet use terms) with a high per capita purchasing power level, Germany offers major opportunities for international companies looking to participate in the domestic market. With 63 million people (77% of the population) online on a regular basis, Germany boasts the most internet users in Europe. More than 41 million (50%) Germans purchased goods online in 2012.”

A study by the E-Commerce-Center concluded that over 80 percent of people making online purchases consider the availability of their preferred payment method to be very or absolutely important. German consumers like to purchase on account, when paying online. Paypal (28%) is also pretty popular among Germans, as we can see from this chart:

When looking at the biggest online retail stores in Germany in 2011, it may not be a surprise that Amazon ranks number one. With a turnover of 3.4 billion euros it’s more than twice as big as number two Otto (€1.5bn).