Consumer behavior

The rise of shopping platforms from China is making a strong impact in Switzerland. In a top 10 list of popular online shopping destinations, three names from China are included. While AliExpress was the only Chinese player in the Swiss top list three years ago, it has now been surpassed by Shein and Temu.

Last year, B2C ecommerce in Europe generated a nominal turnover of 887 billion euros. This was a slight increase of 3 percent compared to a year earlier, when the turnover reached 864 billion euros. However, there are large regional differences.

Unlike most European countries, local players generate the most online revenue in the Netherlands. The top 3 in online spending for 2023 is led by online department store bol. Supermarket chain Albert Heijn, a sister company of bol, takes second place, and electronics retailer Coolblue is in third. Amazon rises in the new ranking and claims fourth place.

The days of declining online sales in Germany appear to be over. Last year the net sales of the top thousand webshops fell by 0.2 percent, not adjusted for inflation, compared to a 2.8 percent decline in 2022. A nominal growth is expected for this year.

More and more Germans are becoming familiar with live shopping. Six out of ten consumers know what the term means, which is twice as many as three years ago. However, live shopping is still used by only a small portion of German consumers.

More than seven out of ten Belgian consumers never (or almost never) return items that they have ordered online. This is because they only order items that they want to keep. Belgians are ordering online more often, with 40 percent of all purchases happening online.

Online fashion platform Asos has announced that it is introducing a return fee in the United Kingdom. However, the fee only applies to customers who, according to the platform, have a high return rate. Several customers of the online only store have voiced their anger on social media.

eBay is giving shoppers more flexibility to cancel their purchases. From now on, they can cancel an order as long as the seller has not marked it as shipped. The company describes this as a simplification that should benefit both shoppers and sellers.

Ikea has opened its hundredth mobile pick-up point at Tesco, the largest supermarket chain in the United Kingdom. On this occasion, the Swedish furniture retailer announced plans to double this number. Almost 40 percent of Ikea's UK sales now come from the online channel.

One in three (34 percent) of online purchases in the first half of this year in Spain were placed on Chinese platforms, such as Alibaba, Temu or Shein. The market share (in terms of order frequency) of these platforms is far higher in Spain than in other European countries. However, Spanish consumers spent a lot less on these platforms than consumers from other countries.

Despite the rapid rise of Chinese platforms, Amazon remains immensely popular in the United Kingdom. The company has managed to maintain the number of monthly active users since the beginning of this year. Shein is growing, but Temu saw a decline in the number of users.

Despite a drop in revenue, Zalando remains the largest online retailer in Switzerland. The local online department store Galaxus, now the new number 2, saw its revenue increase significantly last year. Temu is the only newcomer in the top 10.

Within four months after its launch in France, Temu has managed to achieve a larger market share in terms of value than its competitor Shein. It has not yet surpassed AliExpress. Additionally, 96 percent of Temu customers in the last 90 days were repeat customers.

No country in the world has as many internet users shopping online as the Netherlands, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The ecommerce penetration rate is 84 percent. At least four out of five internet users in the UK, Sweden, and Denmark also shop online.

During the second quarter of this year, online sales in Germany increased 0.2 percent compared to that same period last year. This is the first market growth in two years. However, when looking at the first half year of 2024, sales are still 1.2 percent lower than last year.