Mintel’s E-Commerce – Europe, July 2014 covers the 19 leading economies of Europe. In total these countries account for around 95% of all European retail sales, excluding Russia. The remaining countries are either too small (eg Luxembourg) or are not sufficiently well developed to warrant detailed coverage (eg Romania and Bulgaria).

The report provides market size data and forecasts for 19 European countries, 2009-19, and includes profiles of 23 major online/multichannel retailers, ranging from Amazon to Zalando.

Five of these 19 countries are looked at in detail: the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain are each covered in separate country sections, which are also available for purchase as individual reports. These countries include extensive consumer research commissioned exclusively for our report(s).

The remaining 14 countries are covered in our sections, E-Commerce in Europe – The Market and E-Commerce in Europe – The Consumer.

Mintel commissioned extensive consumer research in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

In each of these markets, we asked a representative sample of internet users:

• Which devices (laptop/desktop, tablet or smartphone) respondents had used to buy products online in the last 12 months, and whether they used them at home or out of the home;

• Which product categories respondents had bought online in the last 12 months, and whether they did so using a laptop/desktop computer, a smartphone or a tablet;

• Which factors or innovations would most improve the online shopping experience for them.

In the UK, we asked additional questions: on usage of customer service and delivery/collection options when buying online; their likelihood of using these customer service and delivery/collection options again; and which retailers they have shopped from online in the past 12 months.

Responses to these surveys reflect the opinion of internet users. While internet usage is high in the UK, France and Germany, it is less so in Spain and Italy. Eurostat records the following household penetration levels for broadband internet: UK 87%, Germany 85%, France 78%, Spain 69% and Italy 68%.

Where internet usage is lower, the online population is less representative of the general population. So, for example, the proportion of respondents buying online may not so clearly reflect the proportion buying online among the total population.

Note that for some survey results we provide netted totals of answers to two or more options. A netted total will often equal less than the sum of the parts being netted, due to overlaps in respondents selecting different options.

The focus of this report is online shopping for physical products – not services or digital products.

Our market size and forecast is for retail sales, transacted online. Online retail sales exclude purchases of services, such as travel or event tickets, and digital downloads/streaming.

The market includes online business-to-consumer sales by all types of retailers – i.e. pureplays and multichannel retailers, such as store-based and catalogue retailers. It excludes consumer-to-consumer sales, such as private sellers on eBay.

Our market size and online sales figures for leading retailers include click-and-collect purchases where these are paid for online but exclude reserve-and-collect where the payment is made in-store on collection.

Our national market sizes are for online retail spending by consumers in each country so they include any purchases from non-domestic retailers (i.e. cross-border). An exception to this is the UK report, where we use ONS data as the basis of our market size. ONS data is based on returns submitted by retailers in the UK, so will exclude online sales where these are fulfilled by a company based outside of the UK but is likely to include sales by UK companies to any overseas customers.

Market sizes include VAT.

The online market sizes (excluding the UK) in E-commerce – Europe, July 2014 are proprietary Mintel market estimates, calculated using a standardised methodology to ensure comparability between countries. Our calculations factor in national participation rates in online shopping, categories shopped online country-by-country, total retail sales and confirmed data on UK internet retail sales.

The market sizes in this report may differ from market sizes on the Mintel Market Sizes service (formerly Global Market Navigator) due to different definitions of e-commerce.

Financial definitions used are:

• Sales: Turnover as reported by the company, excluding VAT.

• Operating profits: pre-tax profits plus interest, less non-trading income such as the sale of fixed assets and any exceptional items, including provisions.

• Pre-tax profits: the net trading profit after deducting all operating costs including depreciation and finance charges, but before deduction of tax, dividends and other appropriations.

• Operating margin: operating profits as a percentage of sales.

Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland.

The Czech Republic and Finland raised VAT rates at the start of 2013. Italy raised the standard rate from 21% to 22% on 1 October 2013.

France raised VAT slightly to 20% on 1 January 2014.