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.
Online shopping in Portugal had a strong performance during the Christmas period of 2025. New data from SIBS Analytics shows that ecommerce purchases increased 19 percent in the number of transactions when compared to the same period in 2024. The total value of online purchases also increased around 14 percent.
The European Union has published new rules on alternative dispute resolution (ADR). The revised directive marks the definitive end of the central European ODR platform. The focus is shifting to national and sector-specific ADR bodies.
Online retail spending in Germany has experienced notable growth. It is expected that online spending will continue to increase over the next four years, with an average annual growth of 4.2 percent. “Online retail is gaining momentum again – and the drivers are diverse.”
Online marketplaces dominate almost every stage of the purchase journey of consumers in the United Kingdom. In high-value purchases of more than 90 euros, 30 percent of shoppers in the country use marketplaces, ahead of physical stores and other websites.
According to a recent study, 95 percent of German retailers have experienced unfair customer reviews. These include false claims and personal attacks. Customers often use these reviews to put pressure on a business.
Amazon is the go-to place for Germans to do their Christmas shopping. Two-thirds of gift buyers shop at the American online retail giant during this holiday season, according to a new study. And 15 percent of consumers shop on one or more platforms from China, with their potential market share being even larger.
Return rates of online orders are an issue for many sellers. In the online fashion sector in the DACH countries, 87.7 percent of sellers report return rates of up to 50 percent. Around 80 percent of online sellers in the region do not expect that return rates will improve in the next three years.
The adoption of ecommerce varies widely across European regions: from 21.7 percent in Yugoiztochen, in the southeast of Bulgaria, to 91.5 percent in the Dutch province of Utrecht. A new map from statistics agency Eurostat clearly visualizes these differences.
Portuguese consumers have now spent around 11 billion euros on online shopping so far in 2025. This is about 1 billion euros more than last year. The estimate comes from the Associação de Economia Digital (AED).
In the second quarter of this year, 78 percent of Nordic consumers placed an online order at a store from abroad. Compared to the same period last year, this is an increase of 4 percent. Cross-border shopping is associated with lower prices, for most consumers in the Nordic countries.
Compared to September 2024, online sales in Switzerland have shown a cumulative increase of 9 percent up to and including the third quarter of this year. And over the first half of the year, ecommerce increased 8 percent. That is a much stronger growth than over the course of 2024.
Vinted is performing well in 2025: revenue grows by 40 percent to over 1 billion euros. The company’s gross merchandise volume (GMV) surpasses the mark of 10 billion euros, according to CEO Thomas Plantenga on LinkedIn. “A big year for Vinted.”
Shein and Temu together sell around 3.3 billion euros worth of products in Germany, according to the German Retail Federation (HDE). One in five German consumers plans to make purchases from the Chinese platforms in the run-up to Christmas. “That is somewhat of a paradox”, says HDE director Stefan Genth.
In the third quarter of this year, more than half (53 percent) of all online orders in Denmark were completed on mobile phones. This was a strong increase compared to the same period last year, when 45 percent of Danes said that they used their mobile phone for online shopping.
Amazon may have to compensate German customers for the higher Prime subscription fees it unilaterally introduced three years ago. A regional consumer protection authority, which filed the lawsuit, wants Amazon to reverse the price increase and refund the difference to its customers.