Ecommerce Switzerland grows 9.7% to €5.14bn

The online retail and mail order business in Switzerland has grown with 9.7% in 2013. The market is now worth 6.25 billion Swiss francs or 5.14 billion euros. Best selling product categories in Switzerland are consumer electronics and clothing. The majority of Swiss consumers, almost nine in ten, prefer to pay by invoice. Nearly 10% of all orders are done with mobile devices.

These statistics come from Der Verband des Schweizerischen Versandhandels, which in collaboration with market research company GfK and postal service Swiss Post interviewed consumers to get these numbers. From the aforementioned 5.14 billion euros, 3.8 billion consists of b2c transactions. Almost 700 million euros were made from auction platforms or online marketplaces, while 658 million euros was being spent abroad. In addition, 165 million euros were being spent on goods that are ordered from abroad and picked up in Switzerland.

Electronics and clothing popular in Switzerland
The online retail industry in Switzerland is once again growing stronger than the traditional retail industry and now accounts for about 6% of total retail volume in Switzerland. With sales climbing to 1.08 billion euros, an increase of ten percent, electronic products accounted for the largest volume. Clothing ranks second with a turnover of 1.02 billion euros, an increase of 8% compared to 2012. In contrast, sales of books, CDs and DVDs have continued to drop, with a 2% decline in 2013. Switzerland on the other hand has a unusually large online food sector, which generated 16.1% of the total turnover last year. Sales of online groceries amounted to 600 million euros.

The study also shows that 85% of orders were being placed via internet (of which 10% took place by mobile devices), the remaining 15% comes from telephone and post orders. Swiss consumers like to pay by invoice (88%), while payment by credit card is being favored by only 7% of the respondents.

‘Swiss consumers become global buyers’
“The huge growth of cross-border transactions has surprised us. Consumers seem to have more trust and use the global internet marketplace more often. Swiss consumers become increasingly more global buyers, as there is a high transparency of competition in terms of price, performance and better functioning supply chains”, VSV concludes.