Online shoppers
This afternoon, I got a chance to crunch some numbers around eCommerce in Europe. (I’ve put the sources at the bottom of the article)
I’ve seen lots of stats flying around, saying things like ‘UK shoppers are among the most likely to buy groceries online’ (source) etc. In the chart below, we illustrate the actual number of people buying online in the EU-28 and then walk through some of the findings.
Online shoppers in Europe by country
55% of Europe is shopping online!
Firstly, before we look at some of the opportunities, let’s not walk past the elephant in the room. There’s 280 million online shoppers in Europe already. More than half of the EU population shopped online in 2016. No maths trickery here folks. This is an all-inclusive number including Grannies, Babies, and people who don’t even access the internet!
Both the number of people and the value of purchases is growing. There’s lots of interesting stats about the types of things people are buying in the ‘ecommerce statistics for individuals’ page linked below. I might cover them in a future article. For now I just want to focus on the sheer size of the european eCommerce market and what it means for manufacturers and distributors of all kinds. 280 million shoppers… 55% of all humans in Europe buy online!
The big 5 countries
Germany, United Kingdom, France, Spain and Italy account for 70% of the online ecommerce market, with almost 200 million online shoppers! Let’s ignore the doom and gloom headlines of Brexit, financial collapse and austerity and all the rest for a second. Look at this:
- Germany: 61 million
- United Kingdom: 54 million
- France: 44 million
- Spain: 20 million
- Italy: 18 million
That’s 197 million people who can buy your products in five very closely connected countries.
Many of us who live in Europe, dream about the US and the massive potential of selling our products there, or the more raw potential of going big in China or Latin America. Let’s not forget how big the opportunity at our doorstep really is!
Sources:
E-commerce statistics for individuals: Main page (Download Source data)
Population and population change statistics: Main page(Download Source data)
Any questions? Feel free to contact us.
If you need an ordering system Sign up for a free iStockist account and check it out.