Online shopping frequency in the Netherlands 2015-2019

How often do Dutch consumers buy something online? According to a 2019 survey, roughly 25 percent of the respondents said they had purchased three to five online service or goods in the previous three months. Compared to previous years, the online shopping frequency seems to have increased. This coincides with an increasing e-commerce market size in the Netherlands, which reached roughly 24 billion euros in 2018.

Telecommunication products and electronics expected to be bought online more

Which type of products do people in the Netherlands buy online? More than half of the products in the segments ‘media & entertainment’ and ‘computer & accessories’ were bought online in 2018. Toys were also a popular product segment for online shopping. Consumers expect the largest relative growth by 2023 in the product segments food, household electronics and telecom. Industry experts partially agree with this, predicting the biggest growth for telecom and consumer electronics.

Cross-border e-commerce on the up

Where do Dutch online shoppers buy their products? The online retailers with the highest revenue in the Netherlands were domestic websites Bol.com and Coolblue. Unlike in other countries in Europe, Amazon does not have a large presence in the Netherlands as the e-commerce giant uses a partially translated version of their German website. Despite this strongly developed domestic e-commerce market, consumers do buy online products abroad. China, especially, was a popular country for cross-border purchases from the Netherlands. The AliExpress Shopping app had the second highest reach of e-commerce smartphone apps at the end of 2018.