GfK Measures Accelerated Growth in Internet Sales

By | Thursday, 13 August 2009

Reported at: Online Retailer

While traditional retail channels in Europe struggle with the impact of the global economic crisis, online spend on consumer durables products has never been stronger. Like-for-like internet sales in the January to April 2009 period, for 11 European1 countries, saw an impressive 7% value growth, as measured by GfK Retail and Technology (www.gfkrt.com). Tradi-tional, mortar, sales in the same period saw a decline of 8.2%.

Internet sales of consumer durable goods now account for a significant 11.5% of total retail spend in Europe (Jan - April 2009). The Internet share of business has almost doubled since 2006, when the channel ac-counted for just 6.4% of total retail value sales.

Certain categories clearly lend themselves more easily to the online model, with European internet sales accounting for 18.3% of IT and office equip-ment value sales, 16.2% of photographic sales, and 10.9% of consumer electronics sales. The growth of the channel however, is being fuelled by more newly emerging sectors, with Internet value sales of small domestic appliances and telecoms experiencing value growth rates of 20+%, and major domestic appliances growing by 5%.

European consumers are certainly illustrating their increasing comfort and confidence with online retailing, across all sectors of the market. With GfK Australia's imminent launch of its online retailing measurement, it will be interesting to see how Australian consumer habits compare with those of our European counterparts.

The survey
Source: GfK RT Retail panel
1) Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Czech republic, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, United Kingdom

For further information, please contact:
Eshani De Silva, tel: +61 2 99002818, eshani.desilva@gfk.com