Second largest worldwide
“On a global scale, the European market ranked second last year, only behind Asia-Pacific, which is mainly driven by the unleashed Chinese e-commerce market. According to our forecast European B2C e-commerce sales will increase by 12.5% and amount to € 477bn in 2015. With this, Europe will increase its lead on third-ranked North America”, Wijnand Jongen (Chairman of Ecommerce Europe’s Executive Committee) said.
Europe’s strong eCommerce growth is in stark contrast with the overall growth numbers of the European economy: its gross domestic product grew 1.6 % (and only 1.4 % within the EU), which means that eCommerce has gained in importance from 1.27 % in 2009 to 2.45 % in 2014. By 2020, that number should have grown to 6 %.
Brits remain biggest online sellers
The United Kingdom kept its first position in 2014, with a 14.7 % growth to 127.1 billion euro, extending its lead on numbers 2 and 3, Germany and France. Those have grown 12.3 % to 71.2 billion euro and 11.2 % to 56.8 billion euro respectively. By comparison, Dutch eCommerce was worth 14 billion euro in 2014, while Belgium reached 4.4 billion euro.
Regionally, Western Europe was eCommerce’s best region and represents about half of Europe’s total internet turnover at 208.1 billion euro. Central Europe, which includes Germany, is second with 106.5 billion euro and a market share of nearly 25 %. Central and Eastern Europe have grown the most, with Russia as the biggest growth contributor – up 25.4 % compared to last year. With an 18.8 billion euro online turnover, it ranks 4th in Europe.
