Germany

There were 65,125,000 internet users in Germany (representing 79.9% of the population) in June 2011, according to Internet World Stats. (Internet world Stats, August 2011)

Of Europe's 372 million unique visitors, Germany accounted for most users with 50.4 million unique visitors during August 2011, according to comScore. Users in Germany spent an average of 24.5 hours online in the past month, consuming 2,710 pages online. (comScore, October 2011)

53.1 million people will use the internet in Germany by 2013, according to eMarketer. This would be up from 48 million in 2009.

Internet users in Germany 2008-2013:
- 2008: 46.0 million
- 2009: 48.0 million
- 2010: 49.7 million
- 2011: 51.0 million
- 2012: 52.1 million
- 2013: 53.1 million
(eMarketer, May 2009)

The widespread use of the internet in Germany continues to increase unabated, and around two-thirds of the population are now online. Recent analysis conducted by GfK Panel Services shows that in July 2010, the websites eBay, Facebook and Google led the way in terms of the total usage time of all internet surfers. Individual internet users spend particularly long periods visiting gaming and social networking sites.

The auction portal eBay was visited by around 40% of all German internet surfers in July 2010. In Germany, each user spent on average slightly more than two hours on the website during the month, which corresponds to a total usage time of more than 38 million hours. Thanks to its large reach, eBay had a considerable lead over other websites. Facebook was in second place with a total of around 33 million hours: members of the social networking site spent on average just under three hours visiting the site during the month. The search engine Google was ranked third, with a total of approximately 30 million hours. Although the length of time spent by individual users on the site was only one hour, around three-quarters of all German internet surfers used Google's services in July.

The Gayromeo platform is in the lead among the social networking sites, with an average monthly usage time of 12 hours, and also takes first place among the 500 websites with the largest reach. The communities Jappy and meinVZ also beat their competitor Facebook by a clear margin, with usage times of 6.5 and 5.5 hours respectively. However, significantly fewer people are visiting these websites, and Facebook can therefore assert its clear market leadership in terms of total usage time. As regards the age of the members, all the named networks have a disproportionate share of users in the 20-40 age group. And there is another common characteristic: members of these networks often live alone in cities. The users of Gayromeo are, as might be expected, almost exclusively male, and it is striking that the website has a disproportionately large share of academics and a high level of income per head.

This analysis is based on the findings of the GfK Media Efficiency Panel, which comprises 15,000 households in Germany and records online behavior, media usage, online purchases and purchases made in bricks-and-mortar stores. GfK WebValue, which was developed in order to conduct standard analyses of websites, shows the reaches of more than 20,000 internet domains and enables more detailed analysis to be conducted for more than 3,000 internet domains on a monthly, quarterly and half-yearly basis.  (GfK Group, September 2010)

A total of 34.1 million Germans aged between 14 and 69 bought goods and services online in 2009, according to findings from the German Online Shopping Survey (OSS) 2010. This represents a rise of 2.2 million customers compared to the previous year.

With 14.9 million online shoppers, books are the most popular product category, pushing clothing (14.7 million) into second place. Then come event tickets (12.5 million), CDs and DVDs (8.5 million) and hotel bookings (7.4 million). The highest gains were made by books (+2.5 million), followed by event ticket sales (+2.2 million) and clothes (+2.1 million). In percentage terms, growth in the number of online shoppers was particularly high for cars (+61%), car accessories (+25%), white goods (+32%) and food supplements (+23%).

Where shoppers had not yet bought online, the online shopping survey also examined why not. In this group, the proportion of individuals who saw no necessity for online shopping in principle, preferring to shop locally in person had grown markedly. It seems to be difficult to persuade these shoppers of the delights of online shopping, since they are firmly convinced that using local retailers is preferable.

While online shopping is not yet particularly popular in some socio-demographic segments, there is certainly potential for gaining more online customers in certain product groups. These areas include travel services, such as hotel bookings and car rentals, and the purchase of medical supplies, food supplements and technical goods like computers and software.

The online shopping survey (OSS) is an annual survey by ENIGMA GfK, an institute specializing in media research which offers information services for TV, print, radio and online media. In January and February 2010, 1,183 Germans aged between 14 and 69 were telephone-surveyed on the subject of the Internet and its impact on their shopping habits for 29 different goods and services. (GfK, March 2010)

German consumers spent around EUR 15.5 billion on goods and services online in 2009, According to GfK. Overall, e-commerce sales recorded a significant increase of 14%.

The Internet has become a popular shopping venue for Germans, and remains the fastest growing sales channel. E-commerce sales rose significantly once again in 2009, bucking the general trend for non-food products.  Nevertheless, the economic crisis has also taken its toll on online retailing. Whereas the growth rate stood at +19% in 2008, online business in the first three quarters of 2009 recorded somewhat moderate development, at +12%. However, sales regained their former strength in the fourth quarter of 2009, with growth of +19%.

The positive growth is primarily attributable to the fact that consumers are spending more money on the web, with average expenditure rising by 10% to EUR 506 per consumer in 2009. Purchasing frequency remained constant, at 9.4 purchases a year.

The individual product segments showed significant differences in growth levels. For example, the durables, which includes furniture, DIY products, toys, books, household products and similar items, and the electronic sector recorded disproportionately low growth of +11.5% and +12.3% respectively. Conversely, sales in the fashion segment rose considerably by 24.5%. (GfK Group, March 2010)

mCommerce

Particularly dynamic growth was recorded by German consumers using their cell phones to carry out transactions, the number of which was up by 157% from 2.1 million to 5.4 million users in 2010, according to the findings of the 2011 Online Shopping Survey (OSS) carried out by ENIGMA GfK.

While 2.6 million cell phone users downloaded games, 2.1 million downloaded music and 1.9 million used their mobile phones for online banking. These were closely followed by 1.4 million users, who didn't just download items, but shopped online for goods and services. (GfK, March 2011)