Shopping attitudes vary across Europe. Retailers must tailor their online offers to the needs of target segments
Retail sales in Europe have been hit hard by the economic crisis, but as retailers struggle to navigate through the storm, they shouldn’t lose sight of the region’s longer-term shopping trends. Online sales have been growing there—rising 31 percent across France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom in 2007, according to the latest available aggregate data. Some signs indicate that Internet sales will continue to grow during the recession: last December, for example, UK online sales were up by 30 percent, compared with those of the previous year—even as sales in stores fell by 1.4 percent, British Retail Consortium figures show.