Corona has brought huge growth rates to online retail. The majority of the business remains firmly in the hands of a few providers. However, experts see niches for movement.
Online trade in Germany continues to be dominated by the top dogs Amazon, Otto and Zalando.
The three internet giants would have again maintained their places as the top-selling online retailers in Germany in the Corona year 2020, said the head of the e-commerce research department at the Cologne retail research institute EHI, Lars Hofacker, of the German press agency.
Overall, according to him, the 1000 largest online shops in Germany benefited significantly from the corona pandemic last year and increased their sales by more than 33 percent to almost 69 billion euros. The growth was almost three times as great as in the pre-crisis year 2019.
The lion’s share of the business – at least 40 percent of sales – was secured by the ten largest e-commerce retailers, which, according to EHI, include Amazon, Otto and Zalando as well as Media Markt, Saturn, Lidl, Apple, Ikea, Notebooksbilliger.de and H&M belong. The top 100 together even made up almost three quarters of total sales. “The online trade remains highly concentrated,” said Hofacker. The online shops of the hardware store chain Hornbach, the furniture retailer Ikea and the electronics retailer Saturn recorded particularly strong growth during the pandemic.
According to the industry expert, there could be movement in the Internet marketplaces in the future, where generalists such as Amazon or eBay have dominated up to now. Because at the moment in many industries from cosmetics to pet supplies, established industry giants such as Douglas or Fressnapf are trying to gain ground against the top dogs with their own marketplaces specializing in their customer groups. “Lots of consumers trust them. That is why this venture has a very good chance of success, ”believes the EHI expert.
Hofacker does not see an end to the online boom at the moment. “The growth will continue.” However, it is not to be expected that the growth rates of 2020 can be repeated. Rather, there is a risk that global problems in supply chains will slow down online growth somewhat.
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