Amazon, Otto and Zalando dominate ecommerce in Germany

Amazon, Otto and Zalando dominate the online retail industry of Germany. Together, these three companies account for about 44 percent of total sales from the top 100 ecommerce players in Germany.

The top 100 of ecommerce companies in Germany sold products online with a total value of 27.4 billion euros last year, the study ‘E-Commerce-Markt Deutschland 2017 from the EHI Retail Institute shows. This is an increase of 12 percent compared to the situation in 2015, when the top 100 generated online sales with a total value of 24.4 billion euros.

But much of these online revenues can be attributed to the top 3: Amazon, Otto and Zalando. Together, these three ecommerce players sold products online with a total value of almost 12 billion euros, which is equivalent to about 44 percent of the top 100’s online sales. Amazon was the biggest, with 8.1 billion euros worth of online sales in Germany last year, followed by Otto (2.7 billion euros) and Zalando (1.1 billion euros).

‘Top 3 players are also platform or market place’

“It’s no coincidence that the top 3 of online stores also act as a platform or market place, because their large customer base gives them a competitive advantage”, says Christoph Langenberg, ecommerce expert at EHI. “But Otto and MediaMarktSaturn show that a multi-shop strategy can also be successful.”

Otto finished second in the top 100, but there are over ten subsidiaries of the Otto Group in this list, the group has generated over 4.8 billion euros last year. Another multi-shop player, MediaMarktSaturn, would’ve ranked in fourth place, when the turnover of its companies MediaMarkt, Saturn and Redcoon would be added together.