Consumer behavior

With the corona crisis giving a massive boost to ecommerce in Europe, customer service teams were put under substantial pressure. And the return numbers also significantly increased last year. How do customer service in European countries perform?

Ecommerce is, of course, very popular now the physical stores are closed in many countries across Europe. But online-only retailers seem to really reap the rewards of having a strong digital infrastructure. In the UK, online-only retailers are now the number-one purchasing channel for fashion shoppers.

More than three quarters of Spanish consumers say they shop online more now than before the coronavirus outbreak. Half of Spaniards even make purchases online at least once a week.

One in two consumers in Ireland say they do the majority of their online shopping with small and medium-sized enterprises from Ireland. But a slightly bigger share of people, 51 percent, place most of their online orders at international retailers.

Paul Marchant, CEO of Irish fast-fashion retailer Primark, doesn't agree with claims that the coronavirus has made shoppers move permanently to online shopping. He calls people claiming there's an inevitable and permanent shift to ecommerce "wrong and naïve".

Southern Europe, in this case defined as Spain and Italy, is lagging behind in ecommerce. Online sales as a percentage of total retail, for example, are far lower than in more northerly countries. But why is this?

Black Friday 2020 is gonna be very different from earlier editions. A recent survey, for example, shows that 69 percent of shoppers in Germany only want to shop online on Black Friday, with just 11 percent shopping exclusively in-store.

Nowadays, the average shopper in the United Kingdom spends 83 pounds (about 91.5 euros) per month online. Last year, this was 75 pounds (82.7 euros). The coronavirus outbreak has for sure contributed to this 11 percent year-on-year increase.

This year, 72 percent of Belgians make online purchases. Of all Belgians who are active online, eight in ten have bought something online in the past year. And 94 percent say they will do so in the future.

For over half of the nearly 3.5 million online shoppers in Hungary, ecommerce is a frustrating experience. It seems that 9 out of 10 consumers have stopped an online order before checkout was completed.

More than two thirds of online shoppers in Germany would like to choose which logistics company sends their online order. The most important reason for this is because it enables them to influence the delivery reliability.

The Covid-19 pandemic has drastically changed the way we shop online and offline. Food retailers have benefited from it, while omnichannel non-food retailers are just starting to recover. How has the coronavirus impacted consumer trends in Europe?

Over a quarter of European consumers will remain shopping more than they did before the coronavirus broke out. And 56 percent buy online three or more products per month during the corona crisis.

The corona crisis has led to a surge in online shopping, but consumers aren't returning more. That's what the Otto Group has noticed. It doesn't have a simple answer to why this is the case, and whether a general trend reversal can be derived from this.

Manufacturers increasingly want to digitize their sales- and buying processes. But what is the current maturity level of their online sales- and services capabilities? And how does it come that manufacturers act so protective in the after-sales business?