Online sales in Europe will grow to €233.9bn by 2018

Ecommerce sales in Europe are expected to grow with a compound annual growth rate of 12% from 2013 to 2018. This will result in an online retail market that’s worth 233.9 billion euros by 2018. This predicted growth will be mostly because of more sales happening via mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

The prediction is the product of Forrester, which published a blog post about it this week. The market research company often forecasts the online retail sales of Europe by looking at the growth rate of 17 European countries an 22 product categories. According to its latest forecast European ecommerce sales will continue their double-digit growth through 2018.

Growth for Southern European ecommerce
And Southern European markets will grow faster than Northern European markets. That’s not really a surprise, as the latter markets are already matured. Ecommerce industries from countries like Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy still have a lot of growth potential, as there are still millions of inhabitants who aren’t shopping online yet. The more mature Northern European markets are larger ecommerce markets overall, Forrester says.

When looking at countries, the United Kingdom remains the country where the share of online sales in the total volume of retail sales is the highest. Last year ecommerce sales accounted for 12% of total retail sales, while this share will grow to 15% by 2018. In France, the share will grow from 6% to 10%, while in Germany the share grows from 7% to 10%.