European E-commerce: €534 billion in 2017

According to research by Ecommerce Europe, the European e-commerce market showed a significant growth in 2017. The total e-commerce turnover increased by 11 percent, making it worth 534 billion euros. In 2018, the expected growth rate is 13 percent, meaning the European e-commerce market will be worth 602 billion euros in 2018. For a large part, the turnover in Europe is still generated in Western European countries. These countries account for approximately 68 percent of the total European online retail turnover. In the South, North, and East, this share is much lower, with 12, 8 and 6 percent respectively. These countries are however the regions with the fastest growing e-commerce rates.

The research by Ecommerce Europe indicates that the United Kingdom (€178 billion), France (€93,2 billion) and Germany (€93 billion) dominate the European market, accounting for over two-thirds of the total European e-commerce turnover. Looking at popular websites, it is not surprising to see that Amazon and eBay are dominating the market. The research, however, shows that Alibaba Group is slowly moving in from the Eastern countries.

European Cross-border shopping 
Looking at cross-border e-commerce, Macedonia and Portugal are the countries where cross-border online purchases take place most (both 85 percent), followed by Luxembourg (79 percent), Switzerland (64 percent) and Iceland (63 percent). The fastest grower in the cross-border market is Slovenia (6 percent), followed by Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Germany, and Finland (5 percent) last year. In total, 38 percent of all online shoppers in Europe did a cross-border order in 2017.