Consumer behavior

Because of the pandemic, more and more consumers find their way to online stores. It's encouraged consumers to buy from retailers they'd never ordered from before, which has made cross-border shopping grow exponentially. Can retailers take advantage from this during the holidays?

Live shopping in Europe is becoming more and more popular. This trend started in China and the rest of Southeast Asia, but now consumers in Europe are increasingly watching live shopping events to get inspired to buy some clothes and other fashion items.

While 45 percent of British consumers say that next-day delivery would make them more likely to shop with a merchant, 66 percent of retailers offer this kind of service. Also, some retailers fail to meet consumers' needs regarding free delivery.

A majority of consumers in Europe want to be inspired when browsing ecommerce websites online. But according to many shoppers, many online stores aren't that inspirational. And that lack of inspiration is a barrier against using them.

Three in four European consumers (74 percent) say they will stick to their pandemic online shopping levels, meaning they won't reduce their ecommerce activities now they can shop offline again. So it looks like the shift to ecommerce is here to stay.

Online shopping has become increasingly popular in Austria. The corona pandemic has, of course, intensified this trend. Currently, 85 percent of Austrian consumers shop online at least once a month, while 42 percent buy products online at least once a week.

In a major part of Europe, delivery costs are the most important factor for online shoppers who are choosing which online store they will buy from. This doesn't necessarily mean online customers are fundamentally unwilling to pay for delivery, but the willingness differs per country.

Many people in Switzerland have permanently changed their shopping behavior due to the corona pandemic. Almost half of Swiss consumers want to consume less in the future. In several product and service categories, the amount of money spent is expected to decline.

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.