"B2B-Marktmonitor" provides first holistic overview of B2B e-commerce in Germany

• New study provides insights into e-commerce turnovers, companies, and trends in B2B commerce 2022
• Wholesalers and manufacturers benefit holistically from the e-commerce boom accelerated by corona pandemic
• Personalization in B2B ensures more efficiency and a better customer experience

Jena, Germany, October 11, 2022 – Due to increasing customer demands, the corona pandemic and digitalization, the framework conditions for B2B commerce have changed significantly in recent years. Digital sales channels and the realization of B2C-like shopping experiences have become a critical success factor for manufacturers and wholesalers. For this reason, ECC KÖLN, together with Intershop, Adobe and Creditreform, is highlighting the trends and developments in B2B e-commerce in Germany as part of the new "B2B-Marktmonitor".

The study clarifies that B2B e-commerce has been growing steadily since 2012 and will continue to gain relevance in the future, especially for manufacturers and wholesalers. Thus, the total B2B e-commerce market of all economic sectors considered (incl. EDI) in Germany reached a volume of almost 1.5 trillion euros in 2021. This means that a quarter of the total B2B commerce turnover was realized via online channels.

Manufacturers and wholesalers generate large shares of their turnover online, primarily via EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), but increasingly also via online shops and marketplaces. Compared to the previous year, B2B online commerce (without EDI) of manufacturers and wholesalers grew by 30.7 percent in 2021 and thus recorded a total net turnover of 352 billion euros. Growth of 33.5 percent is forecast for 2022. Michael Mertens, Senior B2B Commerce Expert, comments: "In B2B commerce, too, buyers want a comparable usability of online shops as in the B2C sector. It is therefore hardly surprising that B2B e-commerce has been growing for years and will continue to become more and more relevant in the future. For 2022, we assume that the turnover of B2B online commerce will be 470 billion euros net and the share of online commerce in total turnover will be 10.7 percent."

• Together, manufacturers and wholesalers generate B2B e-commerce turnover (incl. EDI) totaling 1.2 trillion euros. Of this, B2B e-commerce (excl. EDI) accounts for a turnover of 352 billion euros.
• While B2B online commerce (excl. EDI) recorded an average growth of 25.7 percent from 2012 to 2021, this is only 6.4 percent for B2B e-commerce (incl. EDI).
• For both manufacturers and wholesalers, half of B2B e-commerce turnovers (incl. EDI) are generated in Germany and half abroad; B2B e-commerce turnovers in other EU countries are almost at the same level as global turnovers.

In addition to many other exclusive facts and figures on the German B2B e-commerce market, the "B2B-Marktmonitor" is also dedicated to the trend topic of "personalization in B2B". While personalization measures in the B2C sector are mainly aimed at increasing turnovers, in B2B e-commerce they make a decisive contribution to improving the customer experience and making online shopping as efficient as possible for B2B customers. This goal is achieved, for example, through customer-specific catalogues, contract prices, offers and discounts, role-based rights and self-services or AI-supported search results and product recommendations.

Already 98 percent of the B2B companies surveyed use personalization options. By leveraging a variety of data sources, including order history, price lists, shopping carts, location and weather, perfectly tailored user journeys can be created that have been proven to positively impact customer experience, customer lifetime value and online turnovers. "Personalized product recommendations are high on the agenda of B2B decision makers due to their cross-selling and upselling potential. To find out which type of recommendation is likely to lead to a conversion, the use of AI-based algorithms is recommended. This is how e-commerce quickly becomes a profitable sales channel", says Tobias Giese, Executive VP Customer Success at Intershop.

Various sources were used for the study and checked for plausibility with each other. The most important data sources are surveys by the Federal Statistical Office, survey results from IFH KÖLN and ECC KÖLN, diverse press, company, and association information as well as our own online screening of several hundred companies.

You get a free copy of the "B2B-Marktmonitor" here (German).

 

About ECC KÖLN

As a subsidiary brand of IFH KÖLN, ECC KÖLN is the first point of contact for know-how transfer in the digital retail world. Retailers, manufacturers and service providers benefit from unique market and customer insights as well as individual impulses relevant to success and business, events and training. With the ECC CLUB (www.ecc-club.de), ECC KÖLN offers a unique community and networking platform for decision-makers in e-commerce.