Digital Buyers in Austria Favor Cross-Border Ecommerce

Shopping and buying online is now a routine activity in Austria, according to eMarketer’s latest ecommerce forecast. In 2018, more than 72% of the population, equating to 5.5 million people, will shop for products online. 

Ecommerce sales in Austria will increase 6.8% this year to total $7.93 billion, representing 7.3% of all retail sales. This figure is lower than might be expected because so much of online spending in the country happens on foreign sites.

Austria is very similar to its neighbor, Switzerland, in that it is an advanced and affluent market comfortable with spending digitally. As with Switzerland, we do not expect ecommerce sales in Austria to grow at a significant rate during the forecast period because of the reliance on cross-border purchases. By 2022, ecommerce sales in Austria will reach $10.11 billion, accounting for 8.8% of all retail sales.

“Like many countries in Europe, Austria is an advanced market with a large percentage of the population shopping online,” said Eric Haggstrom, forecasting analyst at eMarketer. “Due to a lack of strong local players, a large and growing share of ecommerce spend is moving cross-border to markets like Germany, where many large ecommerce companies, such as Amazon, have placed their German-language domains.”

Subscribers to eMarketer PRO can access eMarketer's most recent report on cross-border buying: Cross-Border Ecommerce 2018: A Country-by-Country Comparison.