This is the first increase in average transaction amount after 8 years
French e-commerce generated over €110B in 2020. Source: unsplash.com
The e-commerce sector in France generated €112.2 billion in 2020, according to Ecommerce News. In comparison to 2019, online sales grew 8.5%. This growth was not homogenous across all products as the pandemic hit sales of services hard.
Like the rest of Europe, French e-commerce has been marked by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Fevad, the French national association for Ecommerce Europe, presented key French e-commerce metrics for 2020 in a report.
The sector still managed to grow by 8.5% compared to 2019. Stand comparison with the previous four years, Internet sales grew by an average of 13% per year. This growth was largely driven by a sharp increase in merchandise sales (32%), while online service sales were down 10%. The sharp drop in tourism, transportation and leisure sales accounted for 41% of that decline.
In 2020, e-commerce accounted for 13.1% of all retail merchandise trade. While e-commerce generated €112.2 billion, online product sales totaled €60.6 billion. This is 3.3% more than in 2019 and is the usual 0.7% per year average. In particular, the non-food sectors were able to maintain some of their activity during the blockages thanks to online sales.
According to the study, 41.6 million French people shop online, accounting for 81.4% of all Internet users in the country. This is 1.5 million more than in 2019. At the same time, 41.4% of buyers make purchases from their mobile phones.
When French consumers could not buy all categories in stores, they found them on the Internet. This resulted in an average transaction amount of €61, which was up 2.6% from the 2019 average. This is the first increase after eight consecutive years of recession.
Many retailers have increased digitization throughout 2020 to offer consumers the option to continue shopping. Consumers now support this multi-channel approach from retailers, including their local stores. It looks like French consumers who made their way online during the quarantine will continue to shop online. In France, 52% of online stores are growing, compared with 39% of stores that only operate offline.
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