E-commerce in Europe continues to grow significantly, especially in southern countries. According to a study by the Ecommerce Foundation, Ecommerce Europe and EuroCommerce, while retail is facing tough times, European e-commerce turnover increased by 15% to 530 euros in 2016, and is expected to be this year 2017 will be billed 602 billion euros, which will mean an increase of 14% compared to the figures for 2016. With this you can safely say that e-commerce is here to stay.
“Asendia’s head of Marketing and Sales, Renaud Marliare, said: “European cross-border e-commerce is thriving and driving global growth. It has recently been revealed that 6% of the buyers in Europe shop online every day. All of this is driven by improved Internet speed, increased smartphone use, and that logistics networks in Europe are becoming more efficient and integrated.”
Increasing number of companies selling online
According to the Ecommerce Foundation study, the number of companies selling online is increasing. In 2015 the 17% of the companies sold their items online, and the 75% had a website. In 2016 it was 18% of the companies that sold online, and also increased the number of companies with websites to a 77%.
Another piece of the Ecommerce Foundation report is that Amazon remains a leader in online sales for Western Europe with a turnover of 38.5 billion euros and 20.9% in online sales. Amazon, well below, is still zalando with a turnover of 2.3 billion euros and then John Lewis with 2.1 billion.
Western Europe: the largest e-commerce market
According to the Ecommerce Foundation study, Western Europe is the largest e-commerce market with a 53.19%,followed by Central Europe with a 20.68% and third is southern Europe with an 11.20%. In addition to data from the study, the UK remains the largest e-commerce market with 197 million euros in sales, and is also the one with the highest percentage of E-GDP, with a 7.16% . The Uk is followed by Germany, with 86 million euros in online sales, and then France with $82 million.
Markus Tuschl, Global Director of Digital Retail, said that “e-commerce in Europe is very dynamic and we can observe very different stages of this development by country, which has an impact on the business environment in general. For example, in some southern Western European countries the growth phase of online shopping boosted markets. A second momentum was then seen, caused by the results of the impact that e-commerce had over the past decade with the presence of retail companies on the Internet.”
Moreover, according to the study, the growth of e-commerce in southern Europe is expected to increase from 15% in 2016 to 18% in 2017.
Cross-border e-commerce in Europe
The report also shares ideas on cross-border e-commerce in Europe. Last year, 33% of online shoppers in Europe bought abroad, with Luxembourg (74%), Russia (62%) and Switzerland (61%) topping this list.
On the other hand, the Ecommerce Foundation study also highlights that the share of consumers who buy online is higher in mature e-commerce markets. For example, 87% of consumers in the UK place orders over the Internet, while in Denmark and Germany the percentages are 84% and 82%, respectively. Meanwhile, in countries such as Romania, Macedonia and Bulgaria, the proportion of people shopping online is much lower.
E-commerce in Spain
In Spain, according to the Ecommerce Foundation study, the data are quite positive because, on the one hand, southern Europe is the fastest growing market in e-commerce, and on the other hand, e-commerce is expected to grow in Spain by 18% in 2017 , surpassing the 2016 rate of 15%.
In addition to all this, the Spanish market closed 2016 with sales of 23.9 billion euros, a higher figure compared to 20.750 million in 2015. Forecasts for the end of 2017 are EUR 27.970 billion.
The fraud of e-commerce in Spain
But, according to eEvidence data, it’s not all revenue, as companies that bet on e-commerce also face difficulties. One of the biggest challenges that companies can face is fraud.
According to eEvidence, fraud is between 0.5% and 1% of the annual turnover of companies. This is estimated that in Spain alone e-commerce companies suffer more than 100 million euros in losses every year due to fraud.
A portion of these losses are caused by what is known as “friendly fraud”, in which the consumer makes a claim via bank to have the amount of an online purchase returned, without actually being caused reasonable to justify it. According to eEvidence, companies invest a lot of resources in detecting and preventing fraud during purchase, but they look powerless in preventing friendly fraud.
