EU online sales grew 25% as consumers clicked their way through 2020

Overall retail sales in the EU received a boost through e-commerce, which grew 25% last year, following a growth of 10% in 2019 and 7% in 2018. Meanwhile, overall retail sales grew at just 1%, compared to 3% in both 2019 and 2018. With physical shopping still limited in many European countries, we expect online shopping to continue to perform well this year, but not to grow as much as in 2020. Sector level and country level brick-and-mortar retail performances were very mixed. Predictably, clothing and footwear shop sales were down 24%, while food and beverages were up 5.4%, fairly similar to performances in the United States. On a country level, German retail grew by 5% overall, while France declined 1%, and Spain and Italy were each down about 5.5%. UK full year 2020 figures were not available at the time of writing, although e-commerce growth rates have consistently been higher there than the EU-27 average, although the overall retail market performed worse. Across the EU, more people made online purchases in 2020, shopped more often, and spent more money, as shown in the three figures below. Online market penetration across Europe differs by country. The UK and Denmark have the highest number of online shoppers: Last year 83% and 79% of residents, respectively, said they had shopped online during the preceding three months when the survey was conducted. However, in Romania, only 22% of residents had shopped online.

EU online sales grew 25% as consumers clicked their way through 2020

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