(MVCOSHOP, CC BY-SA)
Online shopping is gaining popularity in Poland, but it’s still far behind the United Kingdom, where online shopping is the most popular among all EU member states. According to Eurostat data on the popularity of online shopping among Europeans, 68 per cent of internet users in EU member states declared that they had made at least one purchase online in 2017. Ten years earlier, in 2007, only 50 per cent of internet users in EU member states made such a purchase.
Online shopping is the most familiar to the inhabitants of the United Kingdom, where as many as 86 per cent of internet users declared that they had engaged in online shopping. Online purchases are almost as popular in Sweden (84 per cent), Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg (82 per cent each). A similar percentage of online shoppers was recorded in Switzerland, which remains outside the EU.
Shopping in the internet — which is not particularly surprising — is the most popular among young people. In the EU, the share of e-shoppers among internet users aged 16 to 24 reaches 75 per cent. In this age group, online shopping is particularly popular in the Netherlands (90 per cent) and Sweden (89 per cent). Online shopping is less popular among seniors (aged 65 to 74), but there are some countries, such as the United Kingdom, where the intergenerational differences in this area are becoming increasingly blurred. In the United Kingdom, three quarters of the seniors made online purchases over the last year.
Online shopping is less popular in Poland than an average in EU member states — 58 per cent of Poles made online purchases in 2017. This share of e-shoppers is close to the one recorded in Spain (59 per cent) or Slovenia (57 per cent), but at the same time much higher than in the case of Hungary (49 per cent), Portugal (45 per cent) or Italy (42 per cent), not to even mention Bulgaria (27 per cent) or Romania (23 per cent).
The number of people shopping online is quickly growing in Poland (back in 2007, only 32 per cent of Polish internet users were also e-shoppers). However, the share of online shoppers has increased in other countries as well, and over the last 10 years Poland has not been able to overtake any other EU member state in this respect. In Poland, and in the EU as a whole, the highest shares of internet users shopping online are found among young people (in the group aged 16 to 24 that share reaches 64 per cent). Polish seniors, aged 65 to 74, are much more conservative in this respect. Only 28 per cent of them declared that they had used the Internet for online purchases.
According to the declarations of EU residents, the most popular types of goods purchased online were clothes and sport goods. According to Eurostat data, in 2017 such purchases were made by 43 per cent of buyers in the EU. Polish consumers are already very close to the EU average. In Poland, 38 per cent of customers purchased sports goods online.
