Results from AfterPay Insights’ most recent survey responses show that e-commerce purchase growth in The Netherlands, Germany and Norway reached a plateau in May, with similarly declining growth rates now developing in the first half of June. Is this dampening growth the result of societies opening up?

AfterPay Insights’ research into consumers’ recent e-commerce behavior now contains responses from more than 19.000 consumers in The Netherlands, Germany and Norway over a period of three months. Overall, the results show that the amount of purchases has gone down 12% compared to the second half of May. But still, growth is up 21% when compared to number of purchases before the corona outbreak. A significant contribution to the reduced growth rate is the decrease of Food and Groceries (-25%) and Takeaway (-27%) e-commerce purchases in the first half of June. These two categories stand for 36% of the total decrease in online purchases in the first half of June.

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The Netherlands: From the second half of May to the first half of June the total number of e-commerce purchases declined with -12%, resulting in a total growth in purchases since the corona outbreak of +31%. The decline in the first half of June was mainly driven by reduced purchases in Food & Groceries (-19% compared to second half of May) as well as Take away food (-21%). The number of online purchases within Fashion were unaffected in the first half of June, and the only categories that grew were Gardening tools (+64%) and Travel & Transportation (+22%) but resulting in minimal impact on overall figures since each of these categories only comprise 1% of all e-commerce purchases in The Netherlands.

Germany: From the second half of May to the first half of June the total number of e-commerce purchases declined with -11%, resulting in a total growth in purchases since the corona outbreak of +21%. The decline in the first half of June was mainly driven by reduced purchases in Take away food (-44% compared to second half of May), and secondarily by Food & Groceries (-19%). Reduced purchases within Media/Entertainment (-17%) also contributed to the overall decline in e-commerce purchases. To the contrary of the overall development, purchases in Fashion grew significantly (+16%). Other substantial categories showing growth and reducing the overall decline were Toys (+26%) and Hobby articles (+10%).

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Norway: From the second half of May to the first half of June the total number of e-commerce purchases declined with -8%, resulting in a total growth in purchases since the corona outbreak of +13%. The decline in the first half of June was mainly driven by reduced purchases in Food & Groceries (-48% compared to second half of May), and secondarily by Fashion (-8%) and Hobby articles (-23%). Main categories showing growth and contributing to reduce the overall decline were Tickets (+64%) and Travel & Transportation (+46%), picking up a bit of the heavy reductions these have experienced during the course of the outbreak. But these categories still only operate at less than a third of the number of online purchases than they saw before the corona outbreak.