E-commerce consumer penetration in Europe 2017-2019, by country

What is the market share of online shopping in Europe? Within the EU-27, 60 percent of consumers (aged 16 to 75 years old) used e-commerce at least once in 2019. The country with the highest e-commerce penetration was the United Kingdom, with 87 percent of its people purchasing a good or service online. Percentages were different among the European countries, though. In Germany, for example, 79 percent of consumers used e-commerce, whereas these values reached 70 percent in France and 38 percent in Italy. Calculations from Statista’s Digital Market Outlook estimate that e-commerce revenue in Europe is expected to reach 479 billion U.S. dollars by 2023.

Amazon seems to be one of the drivers behind e-commerce in Europe…

Amazon has a presence in some of Europe’s bigger countries, such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom with its online store and its membership Amazon Prime. Amazon’s Europe division is headquartered in Luxembourg. This Amazon EU S.à r.l. reached a revenue of roughly 28 billion in 2018.

… as well as language.

Language also seems to play a part in online shopping behavior. Consumers from Ireland, Austria and Belgium had the most cross-border e-ecommerce purchases of European countries in 2018. Belgian consumers, for example, tended to visit the French and English domains from Amazon. As the web shop is not present in the country, Belgians visit the foreign domains or web stores in their language. Countries like the Netherlands and Poland, both with a strongly developed domestic e-commerce market and in their own language, saw much less cross-border purchases. This does not mean, however, that consumers from these countries do not shop abroad at all. Approximately 45 percent of Dutch consumers, for example, indicated they bought from a Chinese online store at least once in 2017.