European e-commerce market 2024: key insights
- Pandemic Growth: The pandemic has given a significant boost to eCommerce in Europe, with sales increasing 66% from 2019 to 2021. Despite a temporary decline, the market is expected to continue growing, potentially reaching $955 billion by 2028.
- Market leader: Fashion and electronics are the leading sectors in European online shopping. Subcategories such as Apparel and Consumer Electronics are particularly important, demonstrating both diversity and attention to consumer interests.
- Preferred Payments: Digital wallets are the preferred payment method for online purchases across Europe, but direct account-to-account transfers are also becoming popular, especially in Poland, the Netherlands and Sweden. In Türkiye, however, credit cards are the most used payment instrument.
- Revenue distribution: eCommerce revenue distribution varies significantly across Europe. Ireland, the Czech Republic and Belgium have the highest revenue shares, while the UK leads in e-commerce market size as a percentage of GDP, demonstrating widespread adoption of online shopping.
Europe, although geographically small, is one of the most important economic centers in the world. While major economies on the continent such as the UK, Germany or the Netherlands already have e-commerce penetration rates of around 80% and above, there is still a lot of potential to be exploited in the smaller economies of the South and North ‘east like Greece , Portugal or Poland .
Italy
Italy , the fifth largest e-commerce market in Europe, ranks 13th globally. Online retail represents 12% of the Italian retail market, with a forecast to increase to 17% by 2028. As in most major e-commerce markets in Europe, the Italian Amazon domain Amazon.it is leads with $5.6 billion in revenue in 2023.
The Italian market is expected to grow by 10% in 2024, reaching $41.5 billion by the end of the year. From 2024 to 2028, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8% is expected, with a market volume of $56.5 billion.
Hobby & Leisure leads the Italian eCommerce market, contributing 26% of revenues in 2023. Followed by electronics (21%), fashion (18%), furniture and household items (12%), care products ( 9%), DIY (9%) and groceries (6%).
In Italy, VISA and Mastercard are each accepted by 95% of online stores, with PayPal at 91% and bank transfers at 65%. Cash on delivery is used by 52% of retailers. Bartolini (BRT) dominates the shipping industry, handling 46% of deliveries, while GLS, DHL, UPS and SDA (Poste Italiane ) also play an important role in the competitive market.
The European e-commerce market is approaching $1 trillion
It’s no secret at this point that the pandemic has given a huge boost to e-commerce in many regions of the world. Europe was no exception, with market sales of $423 billion in 2019, rising to $589 the following year, before reaching an even more impressive figure of $702 billion in 2021. This is a 66% increase between 2019 and 2021.
Due to factors such as market saturation and inflation, the following year was not as impressive. With a decline of 7%, the market fell to $655 billion in revenue, still above pre-pandemic levels. Since last year, however, the market has picked up speed and a new decline is not expected.
Our forecasts show that the European eCommerce market will reach $745 billion in sales by the end of the year. This figure is expected to steadily increase to $955 billion by 2028.
But where does all this money go? In other words, what products do Europeans buy online ?
What do Europeans buy online?
Our revenue breakdown data shows what online shoppers in Europe buy most.
- Fashion is in the lead with 21.6% of market turnover. This is not surprising, given that fashion is also the largest category globally (27.5%).
- The main category is followed closely by Electronics and Hobbies & Leisure , each with approximately 20% of the market.
- While Furniture and household items, Food and Personal care have similar market shares ranging from 9.8% to 9.6%,
- The DIY category represents a smaller share of the market at 8.2%.
The major product categories, however, only tell part of the story.
Consumer electronics and clothing with the largest market shares
To go into more detail, we need to take the subcategories into consideration. Sorting these subcategories by market share, we see consumer electronics and apparel at the top.
While consumer electronics accounts for 14% of the European e-commerce market, home appliances (the other subcategory of electronics) are not far behind, standing at 6.6%. With 12.7%, clothing is the product category with the second largest market share in Europe. Sister subcategories Footwear and Bags & Accessories are at 5% and 4% respectively.
Other top subcategories for online shopping in Europe include Media , Furniture , Grocery , Personal Care , and Construction Tools & Supplies , with market shares ranging from 4.5% to 6.3%.
Digital wallets are the primary payment method for most Europeans
In addition to what Europeans buy online, it is equally important to know what they pay for.
A report from WorldPay paints a clear picture. As shown in the chart below, digital wallets are the most popular payment method for online purchases in the majority of European countries included in the study, with the UK having the largest share (38%) of shoppers using this method of payment. payment.
In addition to digital wallets, account-to-account (A2A) payments, which is the simple transfer of money directly from one bank account to another without using a debit or credit card, are also becoming increasingly popular. In fact, A2A is the most popular eCommerce payment method in Poland, the Netherlands and Sweden, with 68%, 64% and 30% of shoppers preferring this method respectively.
Looking at the other payment methods used in European eCommerce, Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) stands out. With 21% in both Germany and Sweden, BNPL is also popular in Denmark (12%) and the Netherlands (11%).
Turkey is also an interesting case: it is by far the leading country in Europe for the use of credit cards for online purchases, with almost half (48%) of shoppers using this payment method. Cash on delivery is also very popular, with 5% of Turkish shoppers paying cash on delivery, the highest rate in the region.
But what about the financial aspects of e-commerce on the continent: how important is the role of e-commerce in the economies of European countries?
