German e-commerce lacks positive impetus

Weak consumer sentiment continues to leave its mark on German online retail. Compared with the same quarter in 2022, according to the German e-commerce and mail order retail association (bevh), online sales of goods (including VAT, not price-adjusted) fell by 13.9 percent across the sector from the beginning of July to the end of September of this year to €17.05 billion. This means that in nominal terms, they are even below the level of the comparable period in 2019 in the third quarter. Looking at the year to date, there continues to be no reversal of the previous negative trend: Sales accumulated up to the end of September (Q1 to Q3) are 13.7 percent below the comparable figure for 2022.

Online sales decreased in all major merchandise clusters. The entertainment (down 18.9) and apparel (down 17.5 percent) clusters saw the largest declines. Sales of hobby & leisure products (-16.6%), apparel in general (-17.2%) and footwear in general (-18.6%) also fell significantly.

Expectations that the market will soon return to growth are accordingly dampened by bevh: “From a consumer perspective, nothing has fundamentally improved in recent months: the spending burden on private households remains high, and the economy as a whole is heading for recession. Online retailing cannot decouple itself from this,” said Martin Groß-Albenhausen, Deputy Chief Executive. “There are virtually no signals in the market that point to an improvement in the situation. Not even five percent of those we surveyed say they plan to shop online more in the next 30 days than before.”

More than one in four of those surveyed (27 percent), on the other hand, want to cut back even more. By contrast, respondents’ satisfaction with e-commerce remains unabatedly high, and as was the case a year ago, just over one in three online shoppers has made more than one purchase within the last 7 days. “The continuing high levels of customer satisfaction and order frequency - albeit for lower sums - clearly show that the decline in sales is not due to weaknesses in e-commerce as a form of retailing, but to cyclical effects,” said Groß-Albenhausen.