Product discovery still mostly happens on marketplaces, with 37 percent of consumers starting their shopping journey there. Compared to last year, this is a decrease of 10 percent. Social platforms and AI assistants have increased their share in the last 12 months.
Ceconomy, owner of MediaMarkt and Saturn, reports online revenue of more than 5.7 billion euros for the past financial year. This means the online channel now accounts for more than a quarter of total revenue for the first time. Growth is largely driven by MediaMarkt’s marketplace.
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.”
TikTok Shop is significantly increasing its sales commission in the five EU countries where the service is active. As of 8 January, merchants in Germany, Spain, France, Italy and Ireland will no longer pay 5 percent, but 9 percent per sale.
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 Platform Group (TPG) has published a vision document towards 2030. The German company, which operates a variety of marketplaces on its own software, plans to expand into more product categories and attract tens of thousands of additional sales partners. Its profitability must increase.
Amazon has added a new shipping option for merchants in its five largest European markets. Sellers shipping from China can benefit from fast delivery at no additional cost, according to Amazon. The solution will later be available for domestic shipments as well.
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.
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.
Paypal has increased its stake in German ecommerce software company Shopware. The online payment system now has a stake in the company of around 41 percent. The move can strengthen PayPal’s position in European ecommerce.
Amazon’s selling partners can no longer use a default handling time of two days. The company has automatically halved the timeframe, to the surprise of many sellers. From now on, they must manually set longer handling times in Seller Central, on a per-item basis.
Around 50 percent of online shoppers in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom have shopped at Temu or Shein this year. Compared to a year ago, the amount of shoppers using those platforms has not changed much. It seems that Temu’s and Shein’s growth in Europe has slowed down.