The German distance-selling sector expects to generate strong Christmas sales and increaseannual revenues 11.8% this year, including a 26.5% boom in e-commerce sales, the country’s
interactive trading association bvh predicted.According to bvh’s latest nationwide survey among German citizens in the 18-69 age range, about38 million Germans, or 73% of the 52 million ‘potential online shoppers’, plan to order theirChristmas presents conveniently from home via the internet. This figure has risen 8% from lastyear’s 35 million online Christmas shoppers. With the Christmas season being the strongest growthdriver of the year, the holiday shopping period is currently experiencing a real boom, thee-commerce association reported.
bvh executive director Christoph Wenk-Fischer commented: “The current year was even stronger forinteractive traders than 2011 in revenue terms. At this stage, bvh expects double-digit growth of11.8% for the overall interactive trade until the end of the year. For the e-commerce segment, wepredict an impressive plus of 26.5%. The positive assessment of the Christmas season 2012 iscertainly derived from the course of the year to date. At the same time, the strong sales in thelast weeks of the year also have a significant impact on the full-year figures. Industryexpectations for this year’s holiday shopping season are high.”
In Germany, the average budget for online Christmas shopping ranges between €300-471 forindividual consumers, bvh revealed. Overall, there are three broad categories of online shoppers.These include the ‘low-user’ (38% of the buyers) willing to spend €150-209 on average, the ‘middle-user’ (37%) with an average budget of €350-453 and the ‘hard user’ (26%) wanting to spend onaverage €640-874 for Christmas purchases via interactive shopping.
Consumers purchasing their Christmas presents over the internet want to buy 3.5 differentproducts on average. In particular, men, young people as well as people with higher income andthose with children plan to buy more products online than other groups.
The top-selling product group in terms of Christmas goods covers clothes, textiles and shoeswith 42% of shoppers, followed by media and consumer electronics (38%) and toys (34%). The fourthand fifth largest product groups relate to gift coupons and computers / accessories with 28% and24% respectively.
The bvh’s optimistic predictions were matched by figures from the HDE, the German retailassociation. Overall retail German sales are expected to increase only 1.5% to over €80 billionduring November and December, according to the association. But online revenues during theChristmas season are estimated to grow about 14% to reach €7.4 billion.
Deutsche Post DHL said it expects record deliveries for this year’s holiday period. AndrejBusch, CEO DHL Parcel Germany, told German media: “We profit especially from the continuous growthin online trade. Business developed very well in November with the number of delivered parcelssurpassing the previous year’s level by around 10%.”
The country’s state-owned railway company Deutsche Bahn is providing 62 extra trains in Decemberto transport DHL parcels ready for local delivery in order to cope with the flood of online orders,German media reported.
