Study: EHI and ecommerceDB analyze online trading in Germany
The times of growth in German online retail are over for the time being. For the past year 2022, the 1.000 B2C online shops with the highest sales, which make up the majority of all B2C online trade, recorded a decline in sales of 2,8 percent in Germany (net, not adjusted for prices). This corresponds to a decrease of 2,2 billion euros to a total of 77,7 billion euros compared to 2021, as the results of the “E-Commerce Market Germany 2023” study by EHI and ecommerceDB show. This means that the continuous growth of online trading has stopped for the first time in the 15-year history of the study.
“Some shops are struggling with major declines in sales or even appear in this year’s study for the last time due to going out of business. However, smaller shops in particular show strong relative growth in the new ranking. Overall, top 1.000 sales are 1,5 times higher than before the pandemic. For the current year, we as EHI initially expect the downward trend to continue,” says Lars Hofacker, head of the e-commerce research department at EHI, assessing the current situation. After the strong growth in the pandemic year 2020 (33,1 percent), the top 1.000 were able to achieve double-digit growth of 2021 percent in 16,1. In 2022, however, the general consumer mood and thus also the willingness to buy online weakened in Germany. Nevertheless, in the pre-Covid comparison (2022 with 2019) there is still growth of 50,2 percent.
Smaller shops win, market concentration decreases slightly
The smaller B2C online shops in the bottom 500 places in this year's ranking grew relatively the most at 7,3 percent compared to the bottom 500 places last year. The German e-commerce market is still highly concentrated; after all, the top 100 generate over 70 percent of the sales of the top 1.000. Since the large online shops in particular have to cope with declines in sales, market concentration has fallen slightly: The net e-commerce sales of this year's top 10 fell by 10 percent compared to last year's top 9,7, so that the share is 38,2 .2,9 percent below the previous year (-XNUMX percentage points).
AboutYou in the top 10 for the first time
In the race for the top positions, aboutyou.de climbs into the top 8,8 with growth of 10 percent. As in the last 15 years, the ranking is led by amazon.de (with 14,4 billion euros) and otto.de (with 4,5 billion euros). Last year's fourth place, zalando.de (2,6 billion euros), made it onto the winner's podium this time, displacing mediamarkt.de (1,8 billion euros) from third place. With shop.rewe.de and bestsecret.com there are also two newcomers in the top 20. The biggest growth drivers here are apple.com (+18,2 percent), breuninger.com (+16,1 percent) and shop-apotheke.com (+15,9 percent).
Top 10 B2C marketplaces
In addition, the study shows for the first time the top 10 B2C marketplaces that will generate sales of 2022 billion euros in 72,8, thus losing 2,4 percent compared to the previous year. The top dog, amazon.de, maintains its top position with a gross trading volume (GMV) of 46,3 billion euros, followed by ebay.de (9,0 billion euros) and otto.de (6,4 billion euros).
