E-commerce in the Netherlands: €22.5 billion in 2017

In the Netherlands, e-commerce was worth 22.5 billion euros in 2017. This is a growth of 13 percent compared to the situation one year before. The Dutch made a total of 201 million online purchases last year, 17 percent more than in 2016. This is what the Dutch e-commerce association Thuiswinkel.org concluded in their annual research 'the Thuiswinkel Markt Monitor'. About 56 percent of the amount of money that was spent online last year, was for the purchases of products. As the amount of online purchases is growing, so is the share of total retail industry in the Netherlands. Currently, e-commerce accounts for 9.7 percent of the total retail industry.

In 2017, the popular product categories are Health & Beauty, Food/Nearfood and Home & Garden. They saw the biggest increase in spendings online. The Dutch spent a significant part of their online purchases in the last quarter of the year, which is not much of a surprise with national holidays like the Saint Nicholas feast, Black Friday and Christmas. On average, a purchase was of lower value than in the other quarters of the year.

Smartphones

Dutch consumers increasingly spend their money online by using a smartphone. It is the first year that the smartphone is more popular as a shopping device than the tablet. 28 percent of the online shoppers used a smartphone as shopping device in 2017. The share of purchases using a tablet saw a minor decrease.

Download the full report here (Dutch).