Brands need to catch on as Amazon tops Personal Care online retail in Germany

19-Nov-2014 - Last updated on 19-Nov-2014 at 16:27 GMT

Related tags Personal care Germany Retailing Online shopping

Amazon reigns supreme in Germany’s personal care e-commerce space not because Germans have an affinity towards it but rather that the country’s retailers and brand sites have left the field open for competitors to swoop in.

Digital market analyst L2 made the interesting finding in its third of a series of European Personal Care studies, the Digital IQ Index, also noting that the Personal Care category in Germany is behind its UK and France counterparts in e-commerce and omnichannel retail.

And it is Amazon that is seeing the biggest digital success so far with 26.5% of the e-commerce market share, as well as being the top destination for online Health and Beauty Shoppers, of which 41% shop on Amazon.de.

The online retailer also has nine warehouses in Germany - a larger physical footprint than in anywhere else in Europe.

Wide open

According to L2, the success is down to native supermarkets and brand sites leaving the field wide open for a competitor such as Amazon to scoop up all the business of convenience-seeking online shoppers.

“While Amazon.de is the preferred e-commerce handoff destination for German Personal Care brand sites, 40% of U.K. Personal Care brand sites link to Boots and Tesco,” says the researcher.

“Both of UK’s top choices have click-and-collect, a service only one German supermarket (Rewe) provides.”

Competition brings Amazon’s share of brand site handoffs to 18% in the UK, making it the seventh preferred e-tailer for handoff.

Compare this to Germany and the percentage of brand site handoffs drops to 17% for Rossman, the second preferred e-tailer for handoff after Amazon.

Catch up

Also noted by L2 in its report, is that the prevalence of grocery discounters has hindered the development of a robust online supermarket in Germany, and in turn services such as click-and-collect.

In general it seems that more can be done digitally in Germany with regards to retail platforms as well as social media channels and consumer engagement online.

As mentioned above, only Rewe offers click-and-collect, while just 24% of Index brands feature reviews on product pages, even though 48% of Germans say reviews are an important factor in online purchases.

According to L2, Germany lags behind the UK and France in Personal Care brands’ adoption of social media platforms and the average number of channel views in Germany (3 million) is 60% of the level of the UK.

More information and the full report can be found here.