German eCommerce grew by 16.5% in Q2 with medication booming
The German association for eCommerce and the mail-order business bevh has published the Q2 2020 results of a comprehensive consumer survey on online shopping behavior. ecommerceDB already picked up the topic in April – and the current developments are worth an update: After the eCommerce business as a whole had seen a large drop in sales in the wake of the first phase of the corona crisis in the first quarter of 2020, Q2 brought along an above-average year-on-year growth of 16.5% for the industry. Some of the product categories that profited from lockdown regulations in March have seen another boost in online sales in Q2, while the “losers” of Q1 seem to slowly recover.
Online demand for medication and groceries has risen even more between April and June 2020. While March 2020 – the first month of corona lockdowns in Germany – had already brought along a year-on-year online sales increase of over 88% in medication products, eCommerce sales in the category grew by 90.3% year-on-year in the three months of Q2 2020. Online grocery sales also experienced another boost: Year-on-year growth increased from 56% in March 2020 to 89.7% in Q2 2020. The trend is similar for other categories as well which had already seen increased online demand at the beginning of the corona crisis. For those categories that suffered the most during the first weeks of the coronavirus outbreak, the worst seems to be over. Product categories like jewelry, clothing or shoes, which had seen negative year-on-year growth in March 2020, are back in the black in Q2. Overall, the highly positive developments between April and June leveled off the devastating first corona effects and helped eCommerce sales in the first half of 2020 back to “normal” performances. According to bevh CEO Christoph Wenk-Fischer, the corona crisis has strengthened the eCommerce industry in Germany as a whole and helped it become a sustainable additional supply infrastructure in Q2 2020.
