German online platform Kaufland is collaborating with Consors Finanz, a provider of consumer loans and part of BNP Paribas Group.

Online shoppers can now use a loan financing option to purchase products on the platform.

Kaufland, a part of the Schwarz Group, is a hypermarket chain from Germany, with an online marketplace that will launch in Poland and Austria by the end of this summer. According to the company, over 11,000 retailers sell through Kaufland’s platform. Together, they offer more than 45 million products.

In April, the company announced that it would increase its seller fees. Now, the company is announcing another change to the platform. It is adding a new ‘buy now, pay later’ payment method for its customers, by adding Consors Finanz’ loan financing solution.

Customers can apply for an installment loan when ordering online, and will receive an answer in a few minutes. Payments to retailers are processed through an escrow account. For Consors Finanz, this is the first partnership with a marketplace.

Gerald Schönbucher, Board Member of Kaufland e-commerce, said the company’s members are delighted that this cooperation will expand the range of payment methods for the marketplace customers to include an attractive financing option. With Consors Finanz as a strong partner, they can offer extremely advantageous conditions in the area of ​​consumer loans.

The Turkish Ministry of Commerce reports that online spending in Turkey more than doubled last year. Significant growth is expected again this year. This is largely the result of inflation, but there is also considerable autonomous growth.

Ecommerce spending in Turkey amounted to 1.85 trillion Turkish liras in 2023, or 53 billion euros at the current exchange rate, approximately equally divided between products and services. Spending growth in liras was no less than 115 percent, but that does not mean that the importance of ecommerce has doubled in one year; the growth is largely due to raging inflation, which has risen to 75 percent.

Growth indicators

First, the number of transactions grew by 22.3 percent last year to 5.87 billion units. For comparison, in the five largest Western European countries, online spending did not or hardly increase in 2023, Forrester calculated.

Second, the online turnover share in total consumer spending has doubled in the past four years, from 10.1 percent in 2019 to 20.3 percent last year. Coronavirus gave a significant boost to the adoption of Turkish ecommerce, the ministry notes, but the growth has continued after the pandemic.

For this year, the commerce ministry expects spending growth of 84 percent thanks to 6.67 billion transactions. That is 13 percent more than last year. The forecast is higher than the promising European growth averages that Forrester and GlobalData previously predicted.

In Turkey, 559,412 companies are registered as active in ecommerce. The product categories with the largest turnover are white goods and household appliances, followed by electronics and thirdly clothing, footwear and accessories. On average, Turks have to wait 46.2 hours for an order to be delivered, according to the report.

Step by step, Amazon is revamping its delivery network.

To make deliveries to customers in the United Kingdom more sustainable, Amazon is increasingly using so-called micromobility hubs. The first micromobility hub in Northern Ireland recently opened.

Micromobility centers are, in fact, sorting centers in urban areas. Amazon is implementing a network of these hubs in major cities to reduce its reliance on traditional delivery vans and their associated carbon footprint.

Packages are brought from Amazon’s larger fulfillment centers to these hubs. From there, the last mile delivery to the customer takes place via electric cargo bikes or even on foot.

The company states that “millions of Amazon packages” have already been sustainably delivered from micromobility hubs in London, Manchester, Glasgow, and recently Belfast. The hubs help improve air quality and alleviate congestion on city roads, according to the market leader.

With its Climate Pledge, co-signed by hundreds of other major companies, Amazon aims to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. This is ten years earlier than the ambition outlined in the Paris Climate Agreement. To reach that goal, the ecommerce giant is making various aspects of its operations more sustainable.

Besides the last mile, as is the case with the micromobility hubs, Amazon’s sustainability initiatives involve earlier steps in the logistics process, such as the so-called middle mile and first mile. To decarbonize its transportation network in Europe, Amazon is, for example, shifting from roads to trains and boats.

Furthermore, Amazon has initiated dozens of renewable energy projects in Europe and has switched to using only recyclable boxes, bags, and envelopes for deliveries in Europe.

The online European cross-border market reached a turnover of 237 billion euros in 2023. This is an increase of 32 percent compared to the year before. European online stores generated 107 billion euros in cross-border turnover.

In 2022, European cross-border ecommerce was worth 179 billion euros and online stores in Europe generated a cross-border turnover of 105.5 billion euros. That was a record-high amount of turnover. Last year, they achieved an increase of 1.4 percent.

These data come from the 6^th edition of the ‘TOP 500 B2C Cross-Border Retail Europe’ from Cross-Border Commerce Europe, an annual ranking of the biggest 500 European cross-border online stores. The report does not include travel.

According to the report, the total online B2C turnover for goods in Europe reached a turnover of 741 billion euros. This is an increase of 13 percent compared to 2022. Of that total, 32 percent was generated with cross-border sales.

The report also highlights the biggest European ecommerce markets. German online stores generated 43 billion euros in cross-border turnover. This was an increase of 28 percent. Cross-border sales in the United Kingdom fell with a historically low 1.8 percent. Online stores in that country generated 27.5 billion euros in cross-border turnover. In 2022, they generated 28 billion euros.

Other European markets increased significantly in their cross-border turnover. French online stores generated 32 billion euros across borders (an increase of 30 percent). Spanish online stores reached 18 billion euros (increase of 50 percent) and Dutch online stores generated 7 billion euros (an increase of 45 percent).

The biggest 500 online cross-border sellers in Europe decreased in turnover, due to the unstable economic environment and competition from the US and Chinese brands. The GMV of the top 500 decreased 18 percent, to 50 billion euros in 2023.

According to the report, Ikea is the top 1 European cross-border seller. It achieved 5.2 billion euros in cross-border turnover. Collectively, the top 10 represent 19 percent of the top 500’s total sales.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Europe has published its measurement standards for retail media in Europe. This gives brands a framework to measure the effectiveness of their digital advertising campaigns. It is a first step in IAB Europe’s plans to create industry standards for retail media.

IAB Europe is an international association that represents the digital advertising and marketing ecosystem. Among members of the association are media, technology, marketing companies and other international IAB’s. It aims to promote industry cooperation and provide frameworks and industry standards.

Retail media is a relatively new phenomenon. It assumes that retailers have free advertising space.  Here we mean, for example, ads in search results, on overview pages and product groups. These ads are shown on the websites of online stores or in shopping apps.

Another example are ads on online marketplaces. Amazon is already actively selling ad space, in Q4 last year it generated almost 15 billion dollars by selling those spaces. This was an increase of 27 percent compared to a year before.

Last summer, IAB Europe established a workgroup that will create standards for this industry. This is an effort to professionalize the market. The association has now released its measurement standards. This will give advertisers more insight into what the investment into the advertising campaign is getting them. Their media agency will receive data on reach, attribution and other campaign insights.

So far, the measurement standards cover primary media metrics (like impressions and viewability) to ensure that digital retail media ads stick to the same standards as other digital ads. It also covers attribution metrics, to make sure that brands can compare their advertising investments with a standard lookback window and iROAS definition.

Some standards for additional insights have also been set. However, the association still wants to include more and will continue working on a broader set of standards. It already has released a roadmap for its plans in the rest of this year.

In the advancing landscape of digital advertising, Retail Media emerges as a crucial media solution, yet its potential was hindered by challenges such as lack of standardization. According to IAB Europe research, only half of buyers currently recognize the efficiencies of Retail Media and seek consistent measurement and standards.

To unleash the full power of Retail Media, addressing this critical gap through standardized measurement methods is paramount. Moving beyond traditional KPIs like ROAS or CPC, the focus on standardization, particularly in media and attribution measurement, holds the key to unlocking its true efficiency, experts say.

With the publication of the first set of European Retail Media Measurement Standards, we affirm our dedication and commitment to providing industry stakeholders with a robust framework that ensures consistency across the ecosystem and enables Retail Media to thrive. These standards not only establish much-needed uniform metrics but also foster transparency, making room for greater innovation and investment in this space, said Townsend Feehan, CEO of IAB Europe.

Otto saw a significant decline in revenue in the past fiscal year. However, the trading volume slightly increased, thanks to sales from partners on Otto’s marketplace. They account for one-third of the income. Otto aims to expand its marketplace offering within Europe.

The German icon of distance trading announced this alongside its annual financial results. In the fiscal year 2023/2024, Otto’s revenue decreased by 8 percent to 4.2 billion euros. This performance was “still well above market comparison”, Otto refers to figures from the Bundesverband E-Commerce und Versandhandel Deutschland (bevh), which noted an 11.8 percent decline and described 2023 as a “low point” for ecommerce in Germany.

In its press release, Otto highlights the positive development of Gross Merchandising Value (GMV), which increased by 2 percent to 6.5 billion euros. The slight increase in Otto’s platform sales, despite the ongoing crisis atmosphere in retail, makes CEO Marc Opelt cautiously optimistic. He previously referred to the platform model as the “key growth engine” of the online department store.

During the past fiscal year, Otto expanded the number of marketplace partners by 33 percent, to over 6,500. Together, they accounted for one-third of the revenue on the shopping platform.

Despite the long and growing distance in terms of revenue on Amazon, Otto is “very well positioned” with German marketplace sellers, according to Opelt. Now the company is preparing to open it up to European marketplace partners. Initially, Otto will connect warehouses of German marketplace sellers in other European countries to its platform. Starting next year, marketplace participants from other European Union member states can also offer their products on Otto’s platform. Currently, a German VAT number is required for this.

Opelt indicates that Otto has deliberately chosen the European perspective saying that the company relies on products that meet the highest quality and sustainability standards. Therefore, they carefully select who may sell goods on their marketplace and who may not. In the future, cheaply produced disposable items will also not play a role in Otto’s business model.

From summer onwards, Otto will open its marketplace to additional product categories, including dietary supplements and energy technology, ecommercenews.com reports.

Kaufland, one of the larger ecommerce platforms in Germany, is expanding to Poland and Austria late summer 2024. Schwarz Gruppe, the owner of Kaufland and supermarket chain Lidl, has more online plans: it is allocating 200 million for Lidl’s ecommerce activities.

Kaufland, a well-known hypermarket chain in Germany, launched its marketplace three years ago, shortly after the acquisition of Real.de by Schwarz Gruppe. In Germany, the marketplace attracts tens of millions of visitors monthly. The assortment comprises more than 45 million products in over 6,400 categories, ecommercenews.com says.

Last year, Kaufland already became active with its marketplace in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. According to Gerald Schönbucher, the CEO of Kaufland E-commerce, the platform is already among the largest marketplaces in those countries, with many local sellers. He considers expansion to Poland and Austria a logical step.

With 245 stores, Kaufland is an established supermarket chain in Poland, where ecommerce is on the rise.

Kaufland becomes a pure online player in Austria. The chain has no physical stores in that country.

Despite the lack of physical stores, Kaufland claims to have a brand awareness of over 40 percent in Austria. Furthermore, the country has few local marketplace providers with a comparable wide product range that’s why Kaufland sees an opportunity in the Austrian online landscape.

The basis for internationalization is the ‘all-in-one solution’ Kaufland Global Marketplace. This allows sales partners to sell nationally and internationally on the different domains after registration. This year, the marketplace also introduces its international Fulfillment by Kaufland service, enabling faster delivery of orders to customers.

Kaufland’s sister chain Lidl is also heavily investing in improving its online activities. Parent company Schwarz Gruppe confirms to Lebensmittel Zeitung a capital injection of 200 million euros to reorganize and further develop Lidl Digital and improve profitability. Although Lidl is experiencing growth in ecommerce, it tripled its loss in the last fiscal year.

Fresh analysis has been published by Billie, an BNPL solution for B2B sellers.  According to its findings, the total European value of B2B goods sold online is estimated to reach 1.7 trillion euros by 2025. However, B2B sellers in Europe are not utilizing all available opportunities yet. Most of them only allow local buyers to shop their goods.

While ecommerce plays a dominant role in B2C, it still has not penetrated that much into the online B2B market. According to Billie, only 50 percent of B2B buyers use ecommerce platforms.

92% of Scandinavian B2B companies expect sales to happen online.

However, Scandinavia seems to be an exception as 92 percent of the surveyed B2B companies expect sales to happen online. And almost one in four of the B2B companies there are already generating sales through ecommerce.

While cross-border ecommerce is growing in Europe, the analysis shows that most European B2B sites only allow local buyers. This means that there are still a lot of cross-border opportunities left unused. Additionally, 57 percent of the largest ecommerce sites in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Sweden (based on traffic) provide B2B services. And among those, only 50 percent ship cross-border.

The worldwide value of the online B2B market was worth 6.5 trillion euros in 2022. A growth of 18 percent is estimated between 2023 and 2030.

For the second consecutive year, Zalando has seen a decline in its revenue, whereas a growing portion of its income comes from sales partners on the platform.

Zalando aims to actively focus on providing support to other ecommerce companies, ecommercenews.com reports.

In addition to annual figures, Zalando has also released an update of its strategy with lifestyle products and B2B services being crucial.

Zalando closed the past year with a revenue of 10.1 billion euros, 1.9 percent less than in 2022. The income had already slightly decreased that year as well.

However, Zalando operates with a better return: the EBIT almost doubled last year, reaching 350 million euros. The German company recorded a net income of 83.0 million euros in 2023, compared to 16.8 million in the previous year.

Zalando saw the number of active customers decrease by 1.6 million last year, to 49.6 million European shoppers. The number of orders decreased by ten times that amount; Zalando received 16 million fewer orders, but with a slightly higher average amount (+5.6 percent).

The company aims to grow its customer and order base again by expanding with lifestyle products, including sports items and toys.

Third-party sales are becoming increasingly important for Zalando. Marketplace partners accounted for 4.9 billion in sales in 2023, half a billion more than in 2022. They represented 34 percent of Zalando’s B2C trading volume.

In its strategy update, Zalando positions itself explicitly as a company with both a B2C and a B2B division, which will also be reported separately.

Last fall, Zalando introduced fulfillment for third-party retailers under its new ZEOS brand. Under this banner, it aims to “shape the European fashion and lifestyle industry beyond its own consumer business”. Zalando enables ecommerce transactions beyond its own platform, for example, via About You, ASOS, or Otto.

Besides logistics, ZEOS aims to support other ecommerce companies with software and services, Zalando indicates. The good profit figures give the company the opportunity to invest in the strategic priorities of its ecosystem vision, according to co-CEO Robert Gentz. “We have the financial strength to successfully build the pan-European ecosystem for fashion and lifestyle ecommerce.”

Amazon lobbyists are no longer welcome in the European Parliament. Their access passes are being revoked due to concerns over transparency and working conditions, which is a rare decision.

This is only the second time in the history of the European Parliament that lobbyists from a company have been denied access, following the controversial agricultural biotechnology firm Monsanto in 2017. Amazon faces a significant setback in its engagement with the European legislature.

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola acted on the insistence of a group of MEPs. They highlighted Amazon’s repeated refusal to engage in dialogue regarding its labour practices, stating: “It is unreasonable for members to be lobbied by Amazon while at the same time being deprived of the right to represent the interests of European citizens and inquire about claims of breaches of fundamental rights enshrined in EU treaties and EU labour laws.”

The European lobbying efforts of Amazon involve both direct representatives with 14 individuals accredited in the European Parliament’s transparency register and intermediaries working for various companies, according to the Financial Times.

American online marketplace giant Amazon reportedly spends millions of euros annually on lobbying European institutions. The MEPs’ call was supported by an open letter from 30 civil society organizations, emphasizing longstanding criticism of Amazon’s treatment of its workers and asserting that EU policy-making is not for sale.

Amazon, the market leader in European ecommerce, has responded to the ban, stating that they are very disappointed with this decision. It has been active in the European Union for more than 25 years and now has more than 150,000 permanent employees there. The company takes their engagement with policymakers in Brussels and across Europe extremely seriously and wants to continue doing this.

The lobby ban for Amazon in Europe underscores the EU’s increasing scrutiny of large tech companies, emphasizing the need for compliance with regulations and social responsibility.