Dutch ecommerce could grow to €24.95 billion in 2018

Ecommerce in the Netherlands was worth 22.5 billion euros last year and could be worth almost 25 billion euros at the end of this year. This would mean an increase of almost 11 percent. This growth rate is somewhat lower than in 2017, when the Dutch ecommerce turnover increased by 13 percent.

This can be concluded from the report ‘The Netherlands: 2018 Ecommerce‘ by the Ecommerce Foundation. According to Wijnand Jongen, CEO of Dutch ecommerce association Thuiswinkel.org, the share of online shopping keeps on growing in the Netherlands and it’s partly because of the recovering economy and the improving consumer confidence in the Dutch economy. “It is nice to see that both online and omnichannel retailers benefit from this.”

81.5% of population shops online

Among the 17 million people living in the Netherlands, 97 percent of them are considered internet users, while 84 percent of these users is an online shopper. This means that 81.5 percent of the Dutch population shops online.

The average spending per online shopper in the Netherlands continues to increase. About 1,200 euros was spent online on average in 2016, while last year almost 1,700 euros was spent per online shopper. Ecommerce in the Netherlands now accounts for 24 percent of the total market. Still, only 27 percent of the Dutch prefer to buy online. This lags behind percentages in other European countries, like the United Kingdom (45 percent), Germany (41 percent) and France (35 percent).

Overall, the ecommerce industry in the Netherlands is forecasted to increase by almost 11 percent this year, which means the online retail industry could be worth almost 25 billion euros at the end of this year.

Clothing: most popular product category

When we look at the amount of money spent online, clothing is the absolute leading product category, with almost 2.3 billion euros that were spent in this category. It’s followed by IT (1.5 billion), telecom (also 1.5 billion) and food/nearfood (1.3 billion). There are currently about 34,000 business-to-consumer websites and that number is forecasted to increase to over 38,000 this year.