Shopping online or selling your products via online shops is becoming more and more natural for customers as well as for retailers.
According to the latest figures from the Federal Association of E-Commerce and Mail Order (bevh), industry sales of goods in e-commerce increased by a whopping 19 percent last year. And the association also expects double-digit growth in 2022. The good thing about it is that print service providers could also benefit from this development.
Almost every seventh euro was spent on goods in eCommerce last year, according to the annual review of the bevh. Excluding sales of food purchases, it was even one in five euros. Goods sold and purchased via electronic trading platforms alone generated a turnover of 99.1 billion euros in 2021; including digital services, the total volume amounted to AS MUCH AS 107 billion euros.
However, the industry has not only grown since Corona caused lockdown after lockdown, but even before. Nevertheless, the pandemic has given the various areas of e-commerce a boost. Already in 2020, growth was 14.6 percent, for 2021 it is 19 percent and for 2022 growth is still expected to be 12 percent.
But three other aspects are also interesting and underline what the bevh sums up from the annual report, namely that e-commerce is the new "normal". On the one hand, online trading platforms are no longer just for the younger generation. Rather, according to the association's assessment, they have now arrived in the middle of society: After all, buyers 50+ were again responsible for at least half of all purchases on the Internet.
Smartphones and tablets are also contributing to the development. In 2021, 40 percent of all e-commerce with goods was generated via mobile devices. Including the first pandemic year 2020, growth in so-called mobile commerce amounts to almost 57 percent and amounted to 39.9 billion euros at the end of 2021.
Above all, the generation of 14- to 29-year-olds does shopping disproportionately often via smartphone and tablet; Social shopping has long been an important trend in the large field of e-commerce – which even online shop operators from the printing industry should not ignore.
Another sign that online trading has established itself at all levels of society is customer satisfaction. According to bevh, the proportion of online customers who were "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with their purchases is over 95 percent. Never before has so much been purchased online in Germany with such a high satisfaction rate.
For the consumer survey "Interactive Trade in Germany", 40,000 private individuals aged 14 and over were surveyed from January to December about their spending behavior in online and mail order and their consumption of digital services.
In order to be able to better assess the developments in individual areas, not only different product groups were considered, but also higher-level clusters were formed. Excluding the cluster with goods for daily needs, the Cluster Facility comes in 1st place with a growth of 23 percent, followed by the Cluster Leisure (17.6 %), Cluster Clothing (16.8 %) and the Cluster Entertainment (15 %).
And what does all this mean for print service providers? Yes, print products are not listed as a separate product group in the annual balance sheet of the bevh. But let's be honest: This is not possible at all, after all, there are so many and so different products that can be printed that each of the clusters considered by the study is likely to contain numerous of them. Just think of the numerous posters, photo products, individualized T-shirts and hoodies, pillows, mugs or even beer benches. Print shops that sell their products via online shops should also be able to benefit from the increasing acceptance of e-commerce.