21.10.2014 E-Commerce is growing up

E-Commerce is growing up
Studies: Statista and EHI track the e-commerce market in Germany


Hamburg / Cologne, 21.10.2014 - The e-commerce market in Germany is now well established. Therefore, the rapid market growth rates have come to a halt. The total sales of the top 1,000 online shops in 2013 reached 30 billion euros*, resulting in a year on year increase of 4.1 percent* - equivalent to over a quarter of the growth rate in comparison with 2012 (16.1 percent). "Despite the significantly slower growth of e-commerce, the boom is not over yet. It is rather symptomatic of a maturing market", comments Lars Hofacker, head of e-commerce research at EHI, on the study about the ranking of the 1,000 largest online shops" e-commerce market in Germany 2014 "by Statista and the EHI.


Concentration and segments


Concentration in e-commerce has increased. More than a third (37.1 compared to 32.3 percent last year) of the turnover of the market is generated by just 10 companies. The Top 100 stores account for almost two-thirds and the top 500 for 86 percent of total revenue. The ranking is led by amazon.de and otto.de, that are for the first time followed by zalando.de ranked 3rd. Generalist shops, with nearly 40 percent, account for the largest share of the total market. The segment "clothing, textiles, footwear" follows with 18.6 percent in second place, ahead of "computer, consumer electronics, mobile phone accessories" with 12.8 percent. The market share of all other segments is below 4 percent.


Shopping anywhere


The trend "everything is going mobile" is increasingly followed by more online shops. Looking at mobile sites with a shop function, the growth rate is at a remarkable 95.9 percent. This share rose from a previous year figure of 19.6% to the current 38.4 percent. More and more shops also offer apps with a shop function. Android-solutions (15.9 percent) now almost matching iPhone apps (16.7 percent). Facebook has become indispensable as a sales promoter with 88.9 percent of online shops using the social network with many benefiting from 10,000 to 50,000 Likes. The study "e-commerce market in Germany 2014" contains the 1,000 online shops with the highest turnover and is available in the webshop.


"The sixth edition of the study has become a standard for the market - the added Excel file that contains details for each of the 1,000 top-selling online stores offers the unique opportunity to get detailed analysis of the market, for example the performance of product segments based on more than 170 shop features. It includes information on traffic, apps, payment options, shop and product reviews, delivery methods, social media, distribution channels in addition to the shop, and contact details. ", says Hubertus Bitting, Executive Director of the Research & Analysis department at Statista GmbH.


* Notes and Methodology
The details of the study are based on a dealer survey (EHI) and extrapolations by Statista, which are based on a regression analysis, as well as corporate information from annual reports, press releases and corporate websites. The focus of the investigation was B2C online shops, concerning the sales of physical goods. Shops which offer mainly digital goods such as apps and streaming services (e.g. iTunes and Spotify) were not considered. In the previous year the sales of digital goods were not included, those transactions are shown in the current version. Therefore a comparison with the prior-year figures is to be treated with caution.

Each company that operates several online shops was considered separately.
Definition of e-commerce sales: Net sales for the respective online shop in 2013, adjusted for returns, excluding value added tax, and only from the core business of online shops (excluding other operating income of the company).