DPD group, one of the largest delivery services in Europe, has published the latest research on e-consumer habits 'E-shopper barometer', which has been conducted for the fifth consecutive year. This research presents the trends and behaviors of Europeans who shop online, and the latest edition shows how Covid-19 has brought about an unprecedented transformation in e-commerce.
– E-commerce was among the few successful sectors that maintained positive business in 2020, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic transformed e-commerce by offering new opportunities. With health restrictions and lockdowns preventing access to traditional retail stores, Covid-19 accelerated the growth of e-commerce worldwide and caused changes that would normally have taken three to five years to occur. In the EU alone, 2020 saw the emergence of 15 million new e-consumers compared to 2019. In just a few months, we witnessed a significant change – emphasized Snježana Stanić from DPD Croatia.
Thus, during the pandemic, occasional e-consumers became regular customers, and a new profile of e-consumer emerged – older e-consumers, specifically those over 55 years old. As DPD’s research shows, they tend to exhibit more traditional behavior when shopping, using price comparison tools and reading product descriptions, which indicates a certain degree of caution when shopping online. With the development of e-commerce, customer expectations have also increased, and many have become more open to new brands and stores.
