Online retail is also suffering from the poor consumer sentiment in Germany. Between June and September, sales in e-commerce were 19.8 billion euros, 10.8 percent below the previous year’s level, as the industry association bevh announced on Wednesday. In the first nine months, sales totaled EUR 64.5 billion, 4.4 percent below the previous year’s level.
“E-commerce cannot detach itself from the consumer mood,” said the deputy general manager of bevh, Martin Groß-Albenhausen. Even in product groups that would have shown a slight increase, such as the food trade, this is at best the result of the general price increase .
For the time being, a quick improvement is not in sight for the industry, which has been spoiled by success. When asked directly about their spending expectations, an average of 30.1 percent of customers in the third quarter stated that they “wanted to spend less money on goods in online retail” compared to the previous month.
