Western European E-Com To Reach Nearly €100B

The percentage of Western European Internet users that will shop online in 2003 is running nearly parallel with their American counterparts’ plans for the holiday e-commerce season. According to Jupiter Research (a unit of this site’s corporate parent), 40 percent of American surfers planned to shop online during November and December while 44 percent of Western European users shopped throughout the year.

The analysis of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece further revealed that the biggest penetration leap would occur between 2003 and 2004, and the largest increase in average spending would occur between 2007 and 2008.

Germany is expected to account for the largest portion of e-commerce revenues in 2008 at €25.8 billion, closely followed by the UK (€24.3 billion). France trails with €16.6 billion, then Italy (€6.5 billion); Spain (€4.6 billion); Netherlands (€4.5 billion); Sweden (€2.9 billion); Belgium (€2.1 billion); Switzerland (€2.0 billion); and Denmark (€1.7 billion).

Jupiter Research estimates travel products will continually dominate European consumers’ online shopping – accounting for €33.3 billion or 34 percent of total online commerce spending by 2008. While 40 percent of online buyers will purchase travel online by 2008, 58 percent will buy books online.

Traffic statistics from Hitwise provide insight into the habits of the UK online shopper, finding that most are male (57.3 percent) and aged 35 to 44 (28.64 percent). The most popular shopping keyword searched by UK Internet users for October 2003 was “ebay,” followed by “argos” and “amazon.” UK e-shoppers display their interests through their selection of the most popular product-related keywords driving traffic to retail Web sites – “mobile phones,” “digital cameras” and “lingerie.”