Some figures on Germany, Europe’s largest online marketplace

Germany, Online, Marketplace

Germany, with more than 83 million inhabitants in 2020, is the country with the largest population in Europe. It has a GDP of 3,336 billion euros and is the world’s third largest exporter. In 2020, with 66.4 million users, internet penetration reached 95% of the German population over the age of 14. The share of mobile internet users is 80% of the population over 14 years of age.

With regard to global cross-border e-commerce, 60% of the world’s cross-border e-commerce is to or from an EU country, representing a turnover of 146 billion euros. Of these, Germany, with a year-on-year increase of 43%, has a volume of 27 billion euros.

B2C e-commerce increases in 2020, driven by the pandemic, by 23% year-on-year to 73 billion euros. This corresponds to a growth of 12.4 percent compared to the previous year. The sectors with the largest share of business are the electronics sector, the fashion and accessories sector, and the leisure and recreation sector. Together, the three sectors account for 63 percent of the total share of online business. The company with the highest revenue is Amazon.de with more than 14 billion euros by 2020. This is followed by Otto.de with 3.8 billion, zalando.de with 1.9 billion and mediamarkt.de with 1.3 billion euros.

The market concentration has increased compared to the previous year. The 10 online shops with the highest turnover generate a combined turnover of 20.8 billion euros. The top 100 online shops have a turnover of 37.5 billion euros, which represents 72.6 percent of the total of the top 1,000 online shops.

In C2C e-commerce, companies such as amazon.de and Ebay Kleinanzeige stand out. Amazon exemplifies the importance of these marketplaces in the sales portfolio. Almost half of the top 1,000 online shops use the industry leader as an additional sales channel, increasing by 33 percent in 2020 compared to the previous year.

The 10 online-shops with the highest turnover generate a total of 20.8 billion euros.