Amazon drives the growth of
e-commerce in France

Kantar, via its e-commerce* solution, calculates that French people have spent more than €40.37 billion purchasing physical goods online in 2019. This is an increase of 5.9% in the last 12 months which is worth an additional €2.25 billion.  The Top 10 sites represent 46% of the online value in France.

The top 10 sites in terms of spend**

**Market share ranking in descending order - 100% physical goods from websites other than Supermarket websites.

Amazon is the site that has grown the most in absolute value, an increase of €1.14 billion in one year, this represents half of the e-commerce growth in France in 2019 and is 2.7 times more than the market share of the second site, Cdiscount.  This is continuing an upward trajectory of growth over the last three years: 17.3% in 2019 and 17.6% in 2018.

Kantar estimates 22.2 million French people have placed an order on Amazon, each spending a total of €349 in 2019, an increase of 12%. The frequency of purchases on the site has increased by 11.4% to an average of 9.8 orders per customer each year. In total, Kantar estimates Amazon's business volume from French people to be 333 million items which is worth €7.73 billion (incl. all taxes).  

Marketplace, Amazon’s platform for third-party sellers, continues to grow.  For every €100 spent on Amazon in France, 52% is on products purchased in marketplace, up from 49% in 2018 and 43% in 2017.

Online expenditure now totals €40.37 billion for purchases of physical goods. Key facts about the trends are:

• The growth of online purchases in France is still high, but slowing overall from 10.9% in the year to 2018.
• The growth of online purchase is driven by the frequency which is now at 21 orders per year on average, an increase of 8%.
• The number of customers is stable with a penetration level of 68% although there are high disparities according to age.  Penetration is at 80% among 35-49 year olds and 50% for those over 65 years.
• The split of sales stands out.  Expenditure on the marketplace platforms have grown by 24%, while sales directly from retailers have grown by 2.8%.
  • Fashion (textiles, footwear, leather goods, etc.) represents 19% of the market and increased by 12%
  • Products for the home (interior decoration, DIY, tableware, gardens/swimming pools) represent 18% of the total and increased by 13%.

Month-on-month growth was very inconsistent in 2019. Growth was more than 10% in January, July and October. In November, which is when Black Friday fell, the number of transactions was high at 77 million, an increase of 3million (vs Nov 2018) but the average budget per order dropped, which had a negative effect on growth that month.

Notes to editors

*Source of information:

This information comes from e-commerce, a Kantar Worldpanel solution. E-commerce is a representative sample of 12,000 French individuals aged 18 and over (universe of 49,529,020 individuals). The result can therefore be extrapolated to the behavior of individuals in metropolitan France.

The members of this representative sample declare the purchases they make on the internet, on an ongoing basis, by confidentially transferring the appropriate document (copy of email, order form, invoice).

This method allows the integrity of the data collection to be secured and the performances by sector/category/websites and market places to be broken down with a high level of certainty, in full independence of the web actors.

E-commerce also allows the performances of web actors to be compared and explained over time according to their behaviour levers (number of customers, purchasing frequency, and size of shopping baskets, loyalty, diversity of purchases between the sites, etc.) while providing a detailed profile of their customers. 

Study period: Year 2019, the comparisons are made between 2019 and 2018.

Product scope:

• All physical goods purchased on the Internet (except for travel, transport, and hospitality),
• B to C, purchases on .fr websites, but also on sites based abroad and that deliver to France,
• Delivery costs are not included and the results are not reprocessed for product returns.

Scope of sites: the market shares are calculated for all “websites except Supermarket websites”