Turnover generated by the mail order business has been increasing due to the internet. Online mail order trade in goods increased by 23% to a total of 13.4 billon Euros. Thus in total sales in the mail order trade increased by 3.7% to 28.6 billion Euros.
These are the findings of a survey among consumers called “Remote trade in Germany” which this year was carried out for the third time by TNS Infratest by order of the German association for mail order trade (bvh). In the course of this survey about 30.000 people over the age of 14 were interviewed between March and June 2008.
The lion share of turnover is still generated by sellers who provide both catalogue and internet offers (so-called multi-channel traders). Their sales, however, decreased by 4.6% to 16.6 billion Euros this year. Those who trade over the internet only increased their turnover by 38.6% to about 4.5 billion Euros. Turnover generated by “Ebay-powersellers” fell by 16.9% to 2.08 billion Euros (previous year: 2.50 billion Euros).
“Teleshopping sellers” increased their turnover by 16% to about 1.2 billion Euros, traditional traders by +111% to 1.4 billion Euros and those who are producers and traders at the same time increased their sales by +46.8% to 0.74 billion Euros.
The share of mail order trade in proportion to retail trade as a whole increased from 7.0% last year to 7.2% in 2008.
More detailed information is available for free-of-charge download from the website of the bvh. 