We share lots of articles containing hard statistics about ecommerce in Europe, but sometimes these are just numbers. Sometimes it can be more interesting to know more about the consumers driving these statistics. On this page you’ll find article we’ve written about online consumer behavior in Europe.
EU consumers spend a disproportionately large share of their online fashion budgets abroad. Fashion accounts for 46.2 percent of all online spending at non-EU retailers, followed by electronics as the second-largest category.
Dutch online marketplace Bol is not growing as fast as it did last year. Its own sales have stagnated, but sales by partner sellers on the platform continue to grow significantly. Even with fewer partner sellers.
Amazon is bringing its ‘no-return’ solution for sellers using Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) to Europe. When customers request a refund, they get their money back without having to return the item.
In 2025, more than 16 percent of Austrian consumer spending in retail was generated online. A year earlier, the online share of consumer retail spending came to 14.9 percent. This brings the market volume of ecommerce in the country in 2025 to approximately 12.4 billion euros.
The 100 biggest marketplaces that are active in Europe are expected to generate a gross merchandise volume (GMV) of 175.8 billion euros. And 79.5 percent of that is generated by cross-border sales. The cross-border market share is expected to increase.
German sales for Shein, Temu and AliExpress have dropped 35.5 percent in the third quarter, compared to that same period in 2025. The total sales came to 566 million euros. As a result, the market share has fallen to 3.1 percent. A quarter earlier, their share was still 5.3 percent.
Online sales in Sweden in the second quarter have increased 8 percent compared to the same period last year. All online sectors showed growth. It remains to be seen if this trend will continue the rest of the year.
Including its marketplace, Amazon has a 63 percent share of Germany’s online retail market. Almost all German online shoppers buy from Amazon, which also has a major impact on physical retail. The company directly or indirectly influences 41 percent of German spending in the product categories studied.
TikTok Shop generates far more sales in the United Kingdom than in other European countries. This year, the platform’s gross merchandise value (GMV) in its pioneering European market is expected to rise to almost 5 billion euros.
Nine out of ten euros of online spending that left the European Union in 2025 went to Temu, Shein and AliExpress. In that year, 49.7 billion euros were spent on those platforms. In total, Europeans spent 55.1 billion euros abroad on physical goods. This comes down to 13.1 percent of the total online spending by consumers in EU-countries.
In the summer of 2026, up to 66.7 percent of retailers in Austria, Germany and Switzerland said that they have a maximum item-related return rate of 10 percent. The amount of retailers with return rates over 20 percent has decreased to 23.6 percent, a slight decrease from 25 percent in 2025.
Growth in online consumer spending in Europe is slowing down. For the current year, Ecommerce Europe and EuroCommerce expect growth of 5 percent in nominal terms. The growth engine in Eastern Europe is grinding to a halt.
Temu has broken into the top 10 online retailers in almost every European country. In four countries, the platform owned by China’s PDD Holdings even ranks first, according to ECDB, based on its 2025 data. Worth noting that none of these countries has a local Amazon storefront or a major domestic marketplace.
The organic visibility of large online stores in Germany is under pressure. Last June, on average, they were 16.7 percent less visible in Google’s unpaid search results than in the same month last year.
Chinese ecommerce platforms such as AliExpress, Banggood, Shein, and Temu are more popular than average in Southern Europe, according to research by the European Central Bank (ECB). Shoppers are attracted by low prices and a wide product range.