In the year 2007 almost 13 million Germans aged between 16 and 74 years sold goods or services over the internet. This means that about 20% of people belonging to this age bracket acted as online sellers in 2007 while in 2004 this figure had still been 9 million (14%). For 2008 the figure forecast is 14 million online sellers, says BITKOM, the German Association for Information Management, Telecommunications and New Media. Thus, Germany in this respect ranks second in the EU.
The European leader in this category are the Danes followed by Germans and the Dutch. In the rest of Europe online selling is currently still not that popular. The EU average of online sellers of goods or services aged between 16 and 74 is ten percent. In France and Italy private sales over the internet amounted to just 7% and 4% respectively in 2007. In Romania and Bulgaria even only 1%.
As a platform for purchases the internet has already proved a success for quite a time: in 2007 41% of Germans bought goods or services on the internet while the EU average amounted to 23%.
Selling over the internet in Germany is determined mainly by three factors: broad band internet access, education, gender. 30% of Germans with broad band access sold goods over the internet in the year 2007 while this percentage was just 17% for households with traditional access. Only 15% of Germans leaving school at the age of 15 sold goods online while this percentage amounted to 25% among those who received A-levels. 26% of men used the internet as a selling platform while the percentage among women amounted to only 16%. 