Growth was due to two main factors.
One: further expansion in the number of online shoppers and buyers. GfK reported that 29.5 million people in the country made purchases on the Web in 2008, up 12% year over year.
Two: Average expenditure per purchase rose 7% to about €49 ($72). Frequency of purchase remained constant, however, at 9.4 times per year.
GfK’s analysis divided online consumers into seven groups, based on the products that interest them, as well as their general Web usage and online habits.
In most cases, the contribution the groups made to e-commerce sales was very different from their relative share of Germany’s online population. Information seekers, music fans, bargain hunters and (no surprise) those who shop and bank online all accounted for more than their expected share of e-commerce sales. Bargain hunters, for example, constituted 7.4% of online households in 2008, but chalked up 10.7% of Internet sales.
So-called "selective users" (who made up almost 35% of online households) were responsible for just 12.8% of sales.
