Ranking of online retailers based on revenue in the Netherlands 2015-2018

Amazon’s revenue in the Netherlands was 350 million euros in 2018, making the e-commerce giant only the sixth-biggest online retailer in the country. This number is an estimate based on first party sales based in the Netherlands on Amazon.de (Amazon’s German platform), meaning that Dutch customers buy from Amazon itself. There is an Amazon.nl domain (a translated page from German to Dutch), but this only sells e-books. If customers want to buy something else, they are redirected to the full German website. Consequently, Amazon is used relatively little in the Netherlands and, for example, does not feature in a ranking of most-used e-commerce apps in the Netherlands. Rumors appeared in October 2019 that Amazon would fully launch the Dutch version in early 2020, but these have not yet been confirmed.

The Netherlands and its domestic e-commerce retailers

Most of the biggest online retailers in the Netherlands are established players which do not operate outside the domestic market (except, in some cases, for the Dutch-speaking parts of Belgium). Albert Heijn in third place, for example, is the country’s biggest supermarket chain. Bol.com (an online marketplace, like Amazon) and Coolblue (an electronics web shop) are also familiar names in Dutch e-commerce. This makes the Netherlands a relatively closed market, with a high tendency to do online shopping domestically. In 2018, nearly 70 percent of Dutch individuals purchased their online goods from the Netherlands.

What is the market size of e-commerce in the Netherlands?

Dutch online shopping expenses reached nearly 24 billion euros in 2018, the highest-ever recorded value. When it comes to the overall use of e-commerce, the Netherlands ranks third within the EU-28. 60 percent of all EU consumers purchased goods or services online in 2018, whereas the e-commerce penetration in the Netherlands reached 80 percent. Only the United Kingdom and Denmark recorded higher percentages.