According to him eCommerce consumption Trends study 2021 published by Packlink this November, with more than 5,000 respondents from Spain, Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom, eight out of ten Spaniards (80% of those surveyed) claim to have carried out some online purchase in the last month, and more than half of the survey participants (56%) report having spent more than 50 euros on these purchases. Despite the good consolidation data for eCommerce in Spain, the study shows that we are the Europeans who spend the least on eCommerce (only 20% spend more than 100 euros a month online), a percentage that is 16% in the case of the British, but 27% in the case of France; Germany (26%) and Italy (25%). In this statistic, it must be taken into account that the commercial offer of physical stores in Spain is very high, especially in mass consumption products. The study also notes that Spaniards are the ones who most concentrate our purchases in sales periods or large commercial events, like the campaigns of Black Friday and Christmas. Only during the months of November and December, these events accumulate almost 30% of global sales in terms of billing and continue to be our preferred occasion in 67% of cases, with Tech products (52%) and apparel (48%) topping the bestseller lists among the Spanish.
According to another recent published study by Veepee-IESE on ecommerce in Spain, 58% of online consumers increased their purchases in the last year and currently 1 in 4 online consumers in Spain already shop once a week. The intention of online consumers once we overcome or minimize the pandemic will be to increase their purchases in fashion and travel. In the top 5 of trends in this article are marked: 1) the preference of purchases in marketplaces, 2) the demand for flexible delivery options (they do not want to pay delivery costs and require clear deadlines and delivery times), 3) the search for easy and secure payment methods (the preferred card is still), 4) searching for a more complete digital shopping experience (through videos and more interaction that compensates for the coldness of the environment) and the 5) concern for the sustainability.
The latest CNMV press release on electronic commerce (published in October 2021) showed an increase in ecommerce in Spain during the first quarter of 2021 of a 1.9% year-on-year, reaching 12,474 million euros. The evolution has been very uneven depending on the sectors, seeing how the branches associated with tourism suffered a decrease of more than 70% (compared to the first quarter of 2020) while supermarkets more than doubled their turnover compared to that same period.
There are other important references that mark the need for marketplaces to add value (if not, direct sales can be promoted without the need for intermediaries), the 5G expansion (which will facilitate the improvement of online experiences), the search for recurrence through subscription (key to ecommerce) and the strong entry of Shopify Shop to try to shade Amazon, among other trends.
In summary, in the Spanish market, what seems more likely is that the ecommerce growth will remain constant (not at the 20% rates of before but will continue to grow moderately), that the The preferred channel to buy online is still mobile (and preferably through apps), that the social networks already significantly influence purchasing decisions (8 out of 10 consumers feel influenced by the media, especially social networks according to the second study cited) and that the sustainability, local commerce and social responsibility of companies will be taken into account more and more before making purchases.
At the level of european market, we see that the behavior is quite different depending on each country. The ecommerce penetration in countries like the United Kingdom or France with 48% it is still much higher than countries like Spain (22%) or Germany (21%), which also have much lower average amounts per purchase. This also means that there is still a long way to go to improve ecommerce in these countries. The growth rates of online versus offline do not stop growing in Europe, reaching cases such as Italy where it grows 16 times more than physical commerce. Covid has accelerated and matured European ecommerce.
The objective of Sabadell Bank is to be next to our clients and offer the POS they may need to sell remotely (especially our tpv Smart phone & sell and ours virtual POS), in person or combine both possibilities.