Germany saw its online sales climb 4.3% in the first half of the year compared to the same period the previous year, with the second quarter alone showing a 5.1% rise.
The figures originate from the Bundesverband E-Commerce und Versandhandel Deutschland (bevh), which analyzed spending trends across digital retail, mail-order services, and online platforms by surveying 40,000 German consumers between April and June.
Last year’s online retail growth in Germany exceeded forecasts, rising by 3.2%, bevh reported. The current study shows that German consumers are still increasing their online spending.
Ecommerce Growth Drivers
“Ecommerce has become the mainstay of the German retail sector in this extremely weak consumer environment,” commented Martin Gross-Albenhausen, deputy secretary general of bevh. “Whether pure online or multichannel retailers or sellers on marketplaces: all were able to benefit from this growth in the second quarter. However, a closer look reveals that platforms – and in particular providers from the Asian region – are capturing an ever-increasing share of the market.”
The fastest-growing online categories were everyday goods, up 10.1%, with drugstore chains leading at 11.7%.
The next fastest segments were hobby and leisure items, which rose 7.5 percent, followed closely by car and motorcycle accessories that grew 7.6 percent, showing expanding consumer interest in recreational and mobility-related products.
Entertainment and home furnishing lagged behind the market, with a growth of 2.7 percent. The fashion sector had stronger growth in the second quarter, with 4.4 percent, compared to the first quarter’s 3.6 percent.
Market Trends
Online marketplaces generated a turnover of 11.5 billion euros in Germany by mid-year, an increase of 6.4 percent. Direct-to-consumer manufacturers also grew strongly, by 6.3 percent. Traditional online shops grew by 3.8 percent, but this growth rate is slower than other types of businesses.
Multichannel retailers rooted in physical stores also pushed their digital sales upward, achieving a 2.5 percent increase, reflecting the continued relevance of brick-and-mortar experience in the online arena.
Asian platforms accounted for 5.3 percent of online orders in Germany by mid-year. Revenues of Asian platforms in Germany grew by 20 percent, much stronger than overall market growth. In the fashion sector, these platforms are even more dominant, with a 16 percent share of all orders.
Bevh expects the new parcel tax on imported parcels won’t dent Asian platforms’ dominance. “The levy will have little impact on cheap imports from Asia. Suppliers have already begun to establish their own logistics structures within Europe. This means that goods no longer reach us in a haphazard manner in individual parcels that are almost impossible to monitor, but are instead shipped in containers and then distributed within Europe,” said Alien Mulyk, Chief Executive at bevh.
AI Usage in Online Shopping
In the first half of the year, AI was used by almost 6 percent of online shoppers when searching for information before buying a product. In the second quarter, 31.2 percent of 2,500 online customers said that they asked chatbots for recommendations. However, only 12.7 percent said that they would follow a recommendation from a bot without doing any product search themselves.
Moreover, a mere 9 percent of shoppers indicated they would permit an AI agent to complete purchases on their behalf, highlighting lingering trust concerns around fully automated buying.
