Today, the digital association Bitkom published current survey results on the shopping behavior of German consumers on the Internet. According to the results, 43 percent of Germans shopped more online in 2021 than before the Corona pandemic, and 50 percent spent a more time shopping online.
For this representative study, Bitkom Research, on behalf of the digital association Bitkom, surveyed more than 1,100 Internet users in Germany aged 16 and above online in October 2021 about their online shopping behavior.
These are further insights:
- 4 in 10 German consumers said they had increased their online shopping since the start of the Corona pandemic, and 50 percent spent more time in online stores.
- Like in previous years, 95 percent of Internet users said they had bought or booked something online in the past 12 months, which equals 84 percent of the overall German population aged 16 and above.
- More than one third of respondents (37 percent) made an online purchase at least once a week or daily (four percent). The 30 to 49-year-olds (53 percent) are the most likely to buy online.
- Some of the respondents said they had used online services for the first time, for example to buy clothes, shoes or accessories (20 percent) and medication (16 percent), to use food delivery services (16 percent), to do grocery shopping (15 percent) or to seek medical advice (10 percent).
- Consumers primarily used large international sales platforms such as Amazon or eBay (79 percent) and online stores of national retailers such as Media Markt or Lidl (64 percent) but also regional platforms such as eBay-Kleinanzeigen or Yatego (34 percent) and online stores of regional retailers (28 percent).
- Respondents cited independence from opening hours (71 percent), home deliveries (70 percent), the variety of offers (64 percent), time savings (56 percent), price benefits (46 percent) and highlighted online-shopping as a means to compensate the lack of local stores (32 percent), especially in rural areas (55 percent), as the most important advantages of e-commerce.
- 60 percent of respondents used their smartphone or laptop (57 percent) for online purchases, while desktop computers (38 percent), tablets (27 percent) or voice assistants such as Alexa, Siri or Google Home (two percent) were less popular.
Bernhard Rohleder, Bitkom CEO, added: "Corona has given online grocery purchases a strong boost, even though supermarkets and discounters were open throughout. New business models such as express grocery deliveries in a few minutes will ensure that more and more groceries are bought online, even independently of Corona. (...) The environmental awareness is there. Now it has to be translated quite practically in online shopping. More and more retailers are supporting this, for example, by providing transparent descriptions of the environmental properties of products or the option of CO2 compensation for transport packaging."
Source: Bitkom
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