Online sales have generally been on the rise in Spain, more than in some other big European countries. They accelerated in the first quarter of 2018 to a growth of 33 percent, the highest in five years, according to Spain's National Commission on Markets and Competition (CNMC), reaching a level of almost €9 billion.
The high growth continued in the subsequent months. In the third quarter, online sales were up by 29.9 percent year-on-year to a level of €10.1 billion, led by tourism and air travel. Online sales of fashion products, which including sports clothing and footwear, represented 4.7 percent of the total. Overall, 52.7 percent of the revenues were generated by Spanish websites, but purchases from foreign websites were worth €2.7 billion more than online sales by Spanish e-tailers to customers located in other countries.
According to another recent report by a French marketing firm, Criteo, the share of orders placed by smartphone reached a peak of 52 percent last Jan. 1. By the end of 2017, smartphones and tablets accounted for 45 percent of all online sales of sporting goods.
However, the customer journey seems to be taking a new direction. While the number online orders has gone up, the number of Spanish people placing orders online may be going down. So says the 2018 E-Commerce Study published by IAB España, an association representing the digital advertising and communication sector. If this report is correct, then much of the decline is due to the consumer behavior of 16- to 23-year-olds: they apparently prefer to do their shopping in physical stores – and don't consume much digital merchandise anyway. They use their smartphones to browse the internet, but not to make purchases. They belong to Gen Z, which will be the next generation of athletic consumers.
Yet another recent study indicates that Spanish customers are slower in making a decision to purchase a pair of shoes over the internet than those in other European countries with the exception of Polish, Czech and Slovakian customers.
