Supermarkets, butchers and cheese shops sold less from April to June than in the same months last year. Still, sales went up. This is due to the higher prices, according to statistics agency CBS.
In the food sector, turnover was almost 3 percent higher than a year earlier, although people bought 5 percent less.
The non-food sector turned in 6 percent more than in the second quarter of 2021. Clothing and shoe stores in particular recorded more turnover, furniture stores, do-it-yourself stores and electronics stores did less well than last year.
There was also a lot less online shopping in the Netherlands than a year ago, according to figures from Statistics Netherlands. Web stores and stores that also sell items online in addition to physical stores had an average turnover of 10 percent less than in the same quarter in 2021.
The fact that online turnover has been lower in the past two quarters than a year earlier is mainly due to the fact that the Dutch shopped extremely much online during corona, according to Peter Hein van Mulligen, chief economist at Statistics Netherlands. Now that all stores are open again, many people are going to the store again instead of the website.
Compared to before the corona crisis, turnover is considerably higher: in the second quarter of 2019, turnover from online sales was more than 60 percent lower than in the same quarter this year.