The Southern Europe region is expected to garner €47.8 billion in ecommerce sales by the end of the current year, says a report from Ecommerce Europe.
It says online sales in the region have clocked an annual growth rate of 22% since 2010 and in 2013; ecommerce sales touched €40.8 billion or 11% of the total online sales in Europe.
“The e-commerce market is a beam of hope for the crisis-struck Southern European region on its path out of the recession’” the report adds.
Southern Europe is a fertile ground for online retail activities and which has 125 million active internet users and of which 48 million are buying online.
At present, online retail is generating an estimated 2.0% of total retail sales in Southern Europe, which is made up of Spain, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Portugal, Croatia, Cyprus and Malta.
With total e-commerce sales of €14.4 billion, Spain is leading the Southern European region, ahead of Italy with €11.2 billion and Turkey €8.9 billion.
With a growth of 18.9% in 2013, Southern Europe outperforms the European which posted a growth of 17.5% and the EU28 bloc which averaged a growth of 14.7%.
Despite the fact that the growth of the Turkish e-commerce market is declining, it still grew the fastest in Southern Europe at 35.0%.
Due to market saturation, the Turkish growth is expected to further decline to 17.8% in 2014, as a result of which it will be more in line with that of the other countries in the region.
It is forecast that the Greek market will experience the strongest growth at 18.8%, marginally ahead of Italy at 18.2%.
On average, Southern European online shoppers spent €842 per person in 2013, which is significantly less than the EU28 average of €1,500 and the European average of €1,376.
Last year, Greeks spent practically the same amount - €1,345 per person, as the year, but were still the biggest online spenders in the region.
Behind Greece, Cyprus ranked second with an average spending per e-shopper of €1,000, followed by Portugal €954 and Spain €874.
Ecommerce Europe is a European umbrella organization of around 25,000 companies that sell products and services online.
