Retail ecommerce sales in Western Europe rose by 26.3% in 2020, to €481.54 billion ($539.18 billion). The pandemic is fueling other shifts in the retail landscape, too, such as a greater focus on buying local.
The number of click-and-collect buyers in Germany increased slightly during the pandemic, but not as much as in other Western European countries—and that lag will continue over the next few years. One bright spot, however, is that buyer penetration rates in Germany will steadily rise during that time.
Even before the pandemic, the direct-to-consumer (D2C) space was heating up in Western Europe. But the side effects of stay-at-home orders helped accelerate D2C’s popularity, and the landscape looks to be permanently altered.
The emergence of new companies selling direct online has been a big story for some time. Mattress brands Casper and Emma, luggage maker Away, beauty company Glossier, and garment retailer Happy Socks were among the first highly successful direct-to-consumer (D2C) firms, many of them based in Europe.
We predict reasonable Snapchat user growth of 6.8% in Western Europe this year, resulting in 76.2 million new users on the platform, or nearly 22% of internet users. However, this growth is up only slightly from our November 2019 prediction of 6.3%.