More Germans Buying Online

Online shopping is still growing fast in Germany according to the latest findings from GfK. The agency says the number of e-shoppers rose by 7% in 2005 to 26.9m, with price comparison research a major activity.

ENIGMA GfK's Online Shopping Survey says one in two Germans aged between 14 and 69 years now checks out products on the Internet prior to purchasing, and that slow moving consumer goods such as cars (sic), mobile phone contracts and furniture are key targets for this. Even more people do this than actually buy online - 27.4m aged between 14 and 69 did so in 2005.

Leading the way in e-commerce are books with 10.7m buyers, event tickets (cinema, theatre, concerts and sport) with 9.3m buyers and clothing with 8.1m buyers. Growth in online shopping was particularly strong for white goods, facial and bodycare products and food supplements.

[table]

Price comparison just beats the search for product information as the main reason for researching product purchase on the 'Net. Other common reasons are a search for dealers and stores, test reports and rival products.

Search engines are still more likely to be used to research products than specific product and price comparison sites. Nine out of ten consumers say they google a product before buying; a much smaller but still impressive one in three use comparison sites including Germany's guenstiger.de, billiger.de and preisvergleich.de.

The online shopping survey (OSS) is conducted annually. This year, 1,039 German Internet users aged between 14 and 69 were interviewed by telephone in January and February 2006.

ENIGMA GfK is part of the GfK Group's Media division. The group is online at www.gfk.com

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

• GfK Germany
• All news