European Retail eCommerce Consumer Forecast

European Region Retail eCommerce Consumer Snapshot

The European region as a market boasts more online shopper engagement than the North American region, with 83% of its total retail consumers shopping online within the last year. 

Western European consumers led ecommerce shopping for the European region with 83% of the population indicating that they had shopped online in 2020. Average consumer spending per capita in the European region is led by the United Kingdom, followed by Germany, Spain, and the Nordic countries.

European Region Retail eCommerce Forecast to 2025

Overall online revenue for the European geographies has been steadily growing since 2017, seeing a boost with pandemic lockdown factors forcing consumers online in 2019, we now see a resumption of steady retail ecommerce revenue through 2025.

A closer look at the details of this boost shows that pandemic conditions accelerated most forecasts for “customer adoption of digital interaction” behavior by three years and has increased the “business adoption of product/service digitization” behavior in European B2B eCommerce Markets Forecast by seven years. 

Digital purchases of luxury retail goods and services are what drives 80% of Luxembourg’s total retail consumer sales, followed by Ireland with over 60% of its overall retail share occupied by  ecommerce. Austria rounds out the top three ecommerce consumer markets for Europe with 47% of its total retail sales being online, well above the EU-16 average of just over 25% of total sales being ecommerce for 2020.

European Cross-Border eCommerce Consumer Snapshot

Over the last year, 25% European online retail consumers reported purchasing online from vendors outside the EU, and 34% reported their online purchases came from cross-border transactions within the EU countries.

European consumer purchasing preferences differ from domestic US ones, in that digital accounts, also known as mobile wallets, are the most popular online transaction payment method. Digital/mobile wallet payments will account for over half of all cross-border ecommerce transactions by 2024, and traditional credit card as online payment will correspondingly decline to just over 20% of all online transactions.