Austrians in online fever: Where the money prefers to flow!

Austrians in online fever: Where the money prefers to flow!

The current study "Top 100 web shops in Austria", published by the trade association in cooperation with ECDB, brings interesting insights into the online shopping behavior of the Austrians. The data show that online trading in Austria is growing strongly and the preferences of consumers change significantly. It should be emphasized that Amazon.de and Zalando.at occupy the first two places of the highest sales B2C online shops, followed by shop-apotheke.at with sales of 199 million euros, which makes him the third largest online shop in the country, such as 5min.at reported.

The top 10 most sales online retailers also includes bestsecret.at (178 million euros, 4th place), Ottoversand.at (172 million euros, 6th place), Universal.at (169 million euros, 7th place), Ikea.com (164 million euros, 8th place) and MediaMarkt.at (158 million euros). Interestingly, the data shows that every fourth web shop sells clothing, shoes or accessories in this list, whereby the strongest product groups are fashion & accessories, computer & electronics as well as living & setting up.

payment methods and market concentration

The most common payment methods in Austria in online shopping are Visa and Mastercard, each of which is popular with 91 % of users, followed by PayPal with 83 %. An alarming knowledge is that Amazon, Zalando and Ebay generate more than half of all online sales in Austria. Over 40 % of the country's online editions, which is around 4.3 billion euros, are no longer available on Amazon. Of these, 1.2 billion euros are generated with their own products. Zalando, on the other hand, generates an annual turnover of 607 million euros, while ebay reaches 513 million euros.

Rainer Will, Managing Director of the Commercial Association, expresses concerns about the market concentration in online trade. This raises questions about the influence of such platforms on jobs and tax revenue in Austria. Temu and Shein, which occupy places 4 and 7 in the marketplace ranking, have also been added with sales of 341 million euros (Temu) and 217 million euros (Shein) in Austria.

growth figures and trends in online trading

The SME research has published its 15th edition of the nationwide eCommerce study, which focuses consumer behavior in the distance trade. The study comprises a ten -year comparison and ranges from May 2023 to April 2024. More than 950 Austrians were interviewed. The findings show that total expenses in Austrian online trading increase by 5 % to 10.6 billion euros. In addition, mobile shopping grows by 36 %, whereby the smartphone becomes the dominant order channel.

However, the inflation of the past two years has a negative impact on environmentally conscious buying behavior. Only 47 % of consumers are ready to buy more environmentally friendly products, which is a significant decline compared to the previous year than this proportion was still 65 %.

The role of the circular economy

Finally, the Refurbed company is highlighted, which is number 9 on the rankings with a turnover of 76 million euros in the circular economy category. This shows that there is also space for sustainable concepts within the online market. This makes it clear that despite the enormous dominance of the big players in online trading, innovative and sustainable business ideas are becoming increasingly important.