It is a good three years after the bvh (German E-Commerce and Distance Selling Trade Association) discovered that beyond the traditional mail-order catalogue business, there were also online and television based revenues. Besides physical goods and products, the bvh is now for the first time reporting on revenues from digital "intangible" goods.
In a current press report (GE/EN), the bvh stated that in a representative consumer study conducted by TNS Infratest, German nationals are anticipated to spend 13% more on the Internet in 2009, totaling 21.8 billion euro (previous year: 19.3 billion). From that approximately 15.4 billion euro stem from online revenues from goods and 6.4 billion from internet spending on digital services such as downloads of music, online tickets, private accommodation reservations, etc.
Here the very schematized Exciting Commerce view on the future of online mail-order commerce:
The market will continue its polarization trend in the next years. Due to changing customer make-up, besides the known segments (multi-channel retail, online pure play, TV, eBay, etc.), new and strong growth business models (yellow area in chart) will develop and lend strength to the market.
It will be interesting to see when the bvh statistics will finally include revenues from digital and virtual goods (eg. from social networks and MMOPG games).
With 290 member companies, the bvh represents just a fraction of Germany’s e-commerce businesses. Amazon, eBay, Notebooksbilliger, Redcoon, Vente-Privée and other growth drivers aren’t represented in the bvh. As a comparison, TrustedShops has over 6,000 merchants and is a much more representative sampling of old and new distance selling businesses.
Related posts:
- bvh Figures 2009: Catalogues Remain Biggest Hindrance to Growth For German Mail-Order Market
- ACTA 2009: Frequent Order Customers Jump From 11% To 13%
- The Rebirth of German Mail-Order?
Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.