Norway

If your shipments are damaged or lost during transport, who covers the loss? One might think the carrier covers the full value of the shipment, but this is far from the truth. And also, it depends on in which country the shipment takes place, how big your loss as a retailer will be.

Ecommerce platform Groupon has closed its operations immediately in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. This decision follows after its business has been in decline for months now. Things don't look so swell for Groupon, which has said goodbye to 1,100 employees and exited other international markets recently.

Consumers in the Nordic countries expect to conduct the majority of Christmas shopping offline. But Sweden is the notable exception, as a majority of consumers believe they will shop their gifts mostly online. In total, more than 80 percent of Nordic consumers will shop online this Christmas and almost a quarter of the Christmas shopping will be mobile.

Consumers in the Nordic region made online purchases for 4.29 billion euros during the second quarter of this year. This is an increase of more than 800 million euros or 23 percent compared to the same period last year. Domestic commerce in each respective country grew even harder, by 29 percent.

PostNord's net sales decreased by 2% during the first half of this year. While mail volumes declined by a total of 8%, parcel volumes however increased by 13%, with ecommerce related B2C parcel volumes rising even 17%. But on net sales level, the parcel volumes can't fully compensate for the declining mail volumes, the postal company says.

Sweden is the best country in Scandinavia when it comes to omnichannel retail, a new study shows. However, there are still plenty of retailers who are defined as omnichannel laggards. Especially in the furniture and interior industry, companies haven't fully embraced an omnichannel strategy, while in consumer electronics omnichannel is more common.

Swedish online retailer Adlibris no longer just sells books via its website, as it launched an extended range of completely new categories, both on its Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish websites. The expansion was announced earlier this year, but as of today consumers now also can shop at Adlibris for DIY & crafts items, kids & toys products and office supplies.

The Nordic Delivery Conference in Copenhagen was the setting for a debate between four big European couriers. Bring, DPD UK, PostNord and DHL discussed how delivery can be used as a competitive advantage. Here's what they said.

Consumers in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark shopped online for a total of 3.89 billion euros during the first three months of this year. Ecommerce increased by 7 percent compared with last year, although the Norwegian ecommerce showed some negative development. Nordic consumers are increasingly valuing the power of the recipient and want to choose the delivery method of the items they bought online.

Ecommerce company Stylight is branching out further in the European market and is now available in 14 countries. As of this week, Stylight is there for customers in Belgium and Norway. The fashion discovery website thinks opening up two new ecommerce sites is 'just another logical step of their expansion strategy'.

Ecommerce in Norway is doing well for some time and with a strong fourth quarter it resulted in a 10 billion euros turnover ($10.95 billion) in 2014. Enterprise Federation of Norway expects a growth of 15% which is higher than last year, in which it grew by 10.8%. 

Cross-border ecommerce is growing steadily in the Nordic countries. Especially online stores in Sweden are popular among other Scandinavians. Norwegian consumers shop the most at foreign online stores. Ten percent of all Norwegians shop at Swedish ecommerce sites at some point every quarter.

EDI-Soft, a software developer and provider from the Nordics, is planning to become market leader in digitizing delivery and shipping in China. Because shipments of parcels are still largely treated manually in China, EDI-Soft thinks now is the right time for them to make an entry into the Chinese market.

The total ecommerce industry in Northern Europe is expected to reach sales of 36.8 billion euros in 2014. One year ago, the online economy of goods and services in this region was worth 33.2 billion euros, so this year there’s probably gonna be a growth of 10.8%.

Bring, a Norwegian postal and logistics company that's owned by Posten Norge, has taken a look at the ecommerce industry in the Nordic region. This year's report shows that the consumers' total experience is important when shopping online. And it also shows that there are some big differences between consumers from Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland.