The German interactive retail sector generated strong growth during the first quarter of 2013,including a dramatic 37% rise in e-commerce sales, according to figures released today by the
German E-Commerce and Distance Selling Association (bvh).During the January-March 2013 quarter, the interactive retail sector, covering distance-selling(mail-order) and e-commerce companies, increased total sales by 19.4% to €10.7 billion, abvh-commissioned survey of 40,000 consumers by research companies ChannelAdvisor and GIM found.
E-commerce sales soared by 37.3% to €8.7 billion and now account for 81.5% of total interactiveretail sales in Germany. One year ago e-commerce represented 71% of total interactivesales.
During the last quarter, the top-selling product category was clothes, textiles and shoes, asusual, with sales worth €3,281 million (+2.5%), followed by media products (books, images and soundcarriers) with €1,989 million (+121%). The third best-selling product segment, covering consumerelectronics, dropped by 7%, down to €939 million. The product group “household appliances”generated a strong 47.6% increase with €664 million, followed by articles related to leisure,hobbies and collection with €390 million (-31.5%) as fifth top selling category.
Other product groups generating strong increases during the first quarter of 2013 included petsupplies (€200 million), toys (€309 million) as well as drugstore products, cosmetics and perfume(€305 million).
“The continuously high growth rate in German e-commerce is remarkable,” said Nicolo Viegener,ChannelAdvisor’s country manager for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. “An increase of over 35% in15 months shows clearly that vertical online trade is flourishing.”
Friedemann Weber, GIM sector manager, added: “An increase in e-commerce can be observedespecially in the older target group of people aged over 60. Their share of orders conducted onlinehas risen considerably – by nearly 20% compared to the previous year. This is especially true oftheir online orders via mobile devices and apps. It seems the initial barriers of using onlinetrade have been broken down.”
bvh executive director Christoph Wenk-Fischer commented: “The success of the interactive tradeis unstoppable and the industry is developing at high speed. It is becoming increasingly importantto filter out where the turnover of the industry is generated and how the shopping channels relateto each other. The objective for the sector remains providing the best shopping experience for thecustomers in different ways and in combination of those.”
“For the figures to be even more exact, the study designs also need to be continually developedto get an image that is as real as possible. bvh has sharpened some details in its big consumerstudy in 2013 to receive a more precise overview of the industry development,” he added.
Bvh said that with the start of this year it has won two new partners for its long-runningconsumer study “Interactive Trade in Germany”, the GIM-Society for Innovative market research andthe e-commerce expert ChannelAdvisor. In addition, the study design, the control sample and thesurvey methodology have been further refined to provide even more exact results.
From this year onwards, 40,000 consumers are being interviewed regarding their shoppingbehaviour in online and distance trade compared to 30,000 previously. Some 20,000 consumers are nowbeing surveyed on the phone and a further 20,000 online instead of just by phone as before. Inaddition, the survey now has more precise differentiation of interactive sales channels.
