Online sales in France rose by 14.4% to €22 billion in the second quarter of 2018, thus maintaining the rate of growth recorded since the start of year, new figures from the country’s e-commerce association Fevad showed.
While the average value of each transaction 'basket' (for goods and services) continued to decline, losing €4 on Q2 2017 and falling to €63, this was compensated by an increase in purchasing frequency, according to the figures, which were presented at the opening of this week’s Paris Retail Week trade fair.
Earlier this year, Fevad predicted that French e-commerce would reach and even exceed €90 billion in 2018, against €81.7 billion last year. The market would be driven by the rising number of online shoppers, more frequent online purchases and the expansion of offers, and was likely to top the €100 billion mark by the end of 2019.
Each French online shopper spent on average 10% more on the internet in the second quarter of 2018 than a year earlier – €721 compared to €654 – which is €100 more compared to two years ago. The number of online transactions went up by 21% to reach a total of almost 350 million transactions for the quarter.
Growth was due to the development of the e-commerce offering, with 20,000 more websites launched in the past year, an increase in the number of online shoppers which rose by 488,000 to 37.4 million and the rise in the number of orders per shopper, Fevad noted, adding that the market has maintained its rate of growth since the start of year.
“Looking at the figures, we can say that e-commerce has spread across all categories of the French population and become transgenerational,” said Fevad's managing director, Marc Lolivier.
“For example, more than eight out of 10 people over 65, the least-keen age group for online purchasing, have already used it. That's nine (percentage) points more than in 2017 and 25 points more than in 2016,” he added.
Jamila Yahia-Messaoud, director of the Consumer Insights department at market researchers Mediametrie, noted that the figures illustrated how e-commerce was going “from strength to strength, year on year” in terms of the number of users.
She noted that “the mobile phone was inexorably closing the gap with the computer” from the point of view of mode of access. According to the iCM index, which measures e-commerce from mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, mobile websites and apps), sales in Q2 increased by 20% on the second quarter last year.
According to the iCE 100 index, which measures the top 100 e-commerce websites in France, the leading B2C websites increased their combined sales by 7.5% during the second quarter of 2018, despite a decline in French household consumption for the third consecutive quarter. Most of the major e-commerce players are benefiting from the solid growth in the sector, particularly specialising in furniture and home furnishings (+11%).
The B2B segment within the iCE 100 index continued to record impressive growth, sales increasing 20% over the course of the first-half of the year.
The three most visited e-commerce websites in France in the second quarter of the year, according to the Mediametrie data, were Amazon, CDiscount (owned by French retailer Casino) and online discount retailer Vente-privée. Amazon had on average 28.48 million visitors per month, representing 45.4% of the population, followed by Cdiscount (18.9m) and Vente-privée (13.8m).
On average, 41.6 million online shoppers (66.1% of the French population) visited at least one of France's Top 15 e-commerce websites each month. Of the traditional 'bricks-and-mortar retailers, Fnac (4th) and Carrefour (9th) were ranked highest.
Last year, e-commerce represented 8.7% of the total retail industry in France, up from 7.7% in 2016, according to the association’s research.
