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57% of the largest ecommerce sites in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Sweden provide B2B services, but only 50% ship cross-border.

Europe B2B ecommerce is now a $1.5 trillion industry, says a new report from Billie. Billie is a European buy now, pay later (BNPL) provider.

“While ecommerce plays a dominant role in business-to-consumer (B2C), it still has not penetrated that much into the online B2B market,” the report says.

B2B ecommerce in Europe:

  • Only 50% of B2B buyers use ecommerce platforms.
  • Scandinavia is an exception. There, 92% of B2B companies expect sales to happen online. One in four B2B companies are generating sales through ecommerce.
  • 57% of the largest ecommerce websites in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Sweden provide B2B services, but only 50% ship cross-border.
  • Germany, France, and the United Kingdom lead as the largest B2B ecommerce markets, like their prominence in B2C. “However, e-commerce represents a smaller portion of overall B2B sales compared to its larger role in B2C transactions,” the report says. To put this into perspective, in Germany, 84% of people older than 16 purchase online regularly, whereas only 50% of business buyers use e-commerce platforms.

“Unlike B2C, B2B e-commerce remains much more domestic,” the report says. “In B2C, it is now the norm for buyers to shop using sites located outside their country, using sites available in multiple languages, and offering shipping across Europe. In contrast, most B2B sites are only available to buyers within the same country. When examining the top 20 e-commerce sites in Germany, France, the UK, Netherlands, and Sweden, we found that only 57% provide B2B services. Additionally, among those, only 50% offer shipping outside their country.”

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Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News, published 4x/week. It covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact Mark Brohan, senior vice president of B2B and Market Research, at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @markbrohan. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. 

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