German online shops want to grow international business

The topic of internationalization is currently at the top of the agenda for many German online shop operators.  Become Europe GmbH, a subsidiary of Become Inc. and the world's largest network for product ads, took this fact as an opportunity to inquire more precisely and asked over 1,000 German online retailers about their expansion plans in a survey.  The result: In fact, 77 percent of the shops are currently discussing growing their online business to foreign markets;  36 percent of them have already planned an expansion.  The top destination here is the European market, especially the Scandinavian countries, followed by Russia and North America.

 International online trade seems to be in its infancy in Germany.  Often while surfing, you come across shops that do not deliver their goods abroad or charge horrendous shipping costs for them.  So far, it has not been attractive for most international online shoppers to buy goods online in Germany.  The question of whether it should stay that way and what plans German retailers have in this regard has been investigated by Become Europe GmbH and surveyed over 1,000 German online retailers from the Become retailer network on this topic.  Although 55 percent of the German shops surveyed stated that they also deliver to other European countries in addition to Germany, the share of foreign sales is very low for most retailers.  50 percent of the dealers stated that they generated a maximum of five percent of total sales through foreign business;  only 20 percent of the dealers generate a higher proportion of sales outside of Germany with a share of five to ten percent abroad.  The fact that outside of the home market little or no marketing is carried out is also evidence that the international business has not been approached particularly ambitiously.  Only a third of the dealers list their products in price search engines or address potential customers via search engine marketing (SEA).  However, more than half of the shops do not do any marketing abroad.

 "Product data marketing in particular, e.g. in the form of product advertisements on price search engines, is particularly suitable for starting a new market," explains Michael Rausch, General Manager Europe and North America at Become Europe GmbH.  “Cost control and target group-specific addressing of customers is easily feasible here.  With the help of publisher networks, growing the online business to foreign markets is also not time-consuming, so that initial experience can be gained very easily and without high risk. "

 The survey showed that more and more online retailers are now seeing potential in foreign trade.  After all, 36 percent of the shops are already very specifically planning their expansion abroad.  41 percent are currently investigating this step and voted with a “maybe”.  Number one of the target markets targeted by shop operators is clearly Europe.  All dealers stated that they initially wanted to export to other European countries, especially Scandinavia (35 percent) - followed by Russia (22 percent) and North America (13 percent).  Because by no means all German retailers already deliver to foreign customers: 20 percent of the shops surveyed stated that they only deliver within Germany.

 Another result of the investigation is that for most of the shops already operating abroad there does not seem to be a big difference between foreign and domestic business.  The experiences with logistics and payment are very similar in both markets.  Only the area of ​​logistics seems to be more of a challenge, as 30 percent of retailers stated that they were confronted with more logistics problems abroad.  In the payment area, on the other hand, the failure rate in 15 percent of shops abroad is lower than in Germany.  German retailers see legal uncertainties (50 percent) and cultural differences such as language or lifestyle (45 percent) as the greatest challenge in developing international business.