European Online Sales and E-commerce

I have to admit the main bulk of my ecommerce knowledge revolves around the US marketplace. It should be clear at this point with current world conditions, that borders will matter little in the future and the most savvy internet marketers will be well versed in trends outside of their own geo-political areas.

Such is the reason I am trying to understand more and more about world wide trends and patterns as we all grow closer together. For instance, e-commerce in the United Kingdom is simply booming. While the US ticks along at about 20% growth year over year, e-commerce in the UK grew 54% in 2007, as reported by London based IMRG.

This is a substantial gain under any circumstances. As best I understand, the gain in the U.K. is at least partly due to increased connectivity in households allowing for faster and easier connections. If there are other reasons, please feel free to comment as I would love to know more.

As a quick overview, France and Germany showed slower rates of growth (especially Germany which has been impacted by labor strikes). Here are the European online retail leaders for 2007, according to comScore Networks:

United Kingdom
* Amazon sites
* Apple Inc.
* Home Retail Group
* Tesco Stores
* Play.com sites

France:
* Group PPR
* Apple Inc.
* Amazon sites
* Otto Gruppe
* CDiscount.com

Germany
* Otto Gruppe
* Amazon sites
* Arcandor AG
* Apple Inc.
* O2online.de

January 22nd, 2008