Belgians buy 11 % more online, but sector fears missing out

Belgians bought 11 % more online in 2023, a growth that mainly comes from services and marketplaces. However, the sector organisations fears Belgian merchants are missing out on that growth.

Spending more on experiences

E-commerce is taking care of a quarter of all spending Belgians did last year, the annual Market Monitor and E-commerce Barometer of Becom, the Belgian federation of e-commerce, reports. The growth of online consumption in Belgium last year was significantly higher than inflation, which stood at 2.3 %. Compared to 2019, Belgians bought 4.8 billion more online, now totalling 16.3 billion euros.

This increase does not come so much from the purchase of products, but rather from services such as package holidays and airline tickets (growing by a fifth compared to 2022). “Almost 68 % of all services are bought online”, Becom’s Greet Dekocker explains: this amounts to eight billion euros. “This trend may indicate that Belgians want to spend more money on experiences, such as travel, exhibitions and concerts, rather than buying material products. This trend has been going on since 2021.”

Growing number of webshops

Package deals for holidays ranked number one in the list of online spending, with sales amounting to 3.5 billion euros (+ 28 %). Online purchases of airline tickets and accommodation accounted for 2.1 billion euros (+ 19 %). Clothing accounted for 1.6 billion (- 1.8 %), food represented just 1.2 billion and shoes 832 million.

Along with online spending, the number of online shops in Belgium continues to rise: there were exactly 63,202 at the end of 2023, up 10.5 %. These realised a total turnover of 13.3 billion euros (including 2.5 billion euros worth of services and products sold to foreign consumers), while Belgians bought 5.5 billion euros in foreign webshops.

That 2.5 billion euros sold to foreign customers was a slight decrease compared to the 2.7 billion euros in 2022. Dutch (32%) and French (22%) online shoppers find their way to Belgian webshops in the greatest numbers.

The importance of marketplaces

However, the results also point to an important challenge for the sector, Dekocker shows: one Belgian in three starts his online search on a marketplace, but Belgian merchants are often underrepresented there. As a result, some of the growth in our country goes to foreign players.

“To surf along on the growing e-commerce wave, Belgian traders should be active on online marketplaces. Entrepreneurs who have already taken the plunge indicate that on average they record a 23 % increase in turnover. With a better representation of our merchants on these platforms, consumers will thus also end up on Belgian webshops. A win-win for our country.”