In an interview with Bloomberg News, Lazada’s CEO, James Dong, highlighted that Europe is a “very big market” and that ”for most of the European brands, their largest retail partner is Alibaba Group because of their sales in China and in other markets.” Dong took over the helm in June after heading Lazada’s Thailand and Vietnam operations. “We go where the brands want us to go,” he added. [Alibaba's Lazada Plans Europe Push to Challenge Amazon and Zalando – Bloomberg]
At the end of June, annual active consumers of the Alibaba ecosystem reached approximately 1.18 billion, an increase of 45 million consumers from the previous quarter. This includes 912 million consumers in China and 265 million consumers overseas served by Lazada, AliExpress, Trendyol and Daraz. The Chinese e-commerce giant bought Lazada in 2016 and aims to double its client base to 300 million people by 2030.
According to the European E-commerce Report 2022, carried out for Ecommerce Europe and EuroCommerce, the continent’s online business-to-consumer market rose by 13 percent in 2021 to €718 billion and is expected to rise by 11 percent this year to €797 billion.
The percentage of internet users that bought goods or services online totaled 73 percent in Europe last year and is expected to reach 75 percent in 2022. The figures however conceal large discrepancies by region. E-shoppers are estimated at 86 percent for both 2021 and 2022 in Northern Europe, the highest score for the continent, and at 46 percent last year and 49 percent in 2022 for Eastern Europe, the region’s lowest tally. In Western Europe e-shoppers were 84 percent of the total in 2021 and are estimated at 85 percent for 2022. In Central Europe the estimates are 75 percent for 2021 and 77 percent for 2022, while in Southern Europe the data is 65 percent last year and 67 percent this year.
Western Europe accounted for 63 percent of the region’s e-commerce revenues in 2021, Southern Europe 16 percent, Central Europe 10 percent, Northern Europe 9 percent and Eastern Europe 2 percent.
The report noted that 68 percent of e-shoppers in the 27 countries composing the European Union bought clothes, shoes or accessories in 2021.
