Ecommerce Hungary grows to 640 million euros

The ecommerce market in Hungary has grown to 200 billion Hungarian forint or 640 million euros in 2013. The total retail industry in Hungary is worth 224 billion euros, which makes the ecommerce industry account for 3% of total retail sales. That is still below the average European online share of total retail, which was 8.8% in 2012.

Data comes from GfK Hungária, the local branch of market research institute GfK. According to Országos Kereskedelmi Szövetség (the National Retail Federation of Hungary), there were even 230 billion Hungarian forint (740 million euros) worth of online sales last year. Of respondents between the age of 18 and 48 years old, 76% of Hungarian consumers stated they had ordered something online in 2013. A year before that, this percentage was about 74 percent, so ecommerce is still gaining more ground in the Eastern European country. This also appears from the fact that ecommerce grew with 40% last year, while in 2012 this percentage was ‘only’ 23%.

Ecommerce Hungary continues to grow
The percentage of online shoppers, on a monthly basis, also increased, from 25 percent in 2012 to 28 percent last year. The share of people making online purchases and paying electronically also rose, to 20 percent from 17 percent. And by the middle of last year, around three thousand online stores became functional, with the top 300 websites in Hungary accounting for 90% of total sales online.

According to local industry experts, the growth of the ecommerce industry in Hungary is thanks to customer behavior changes and the fact there’s increasingly more and cheaper access to the internet available. Recently, prime minister Viktor Orban signed a deal with Magyar Telekom, which led him to say that every Hungarian household will have broadband internet by 2018.