WITH THE popularity of online shopping in Slovakia increasing, the country’s proportion of online shoppers is one of the most rapidly growing in Europe. Items most frequently purchased via the internet are clothes and sporting goods, say analysts of the monetary department at the National Bank of Slovakia (NBS), citing their findings from a Eurostat study assessing online shopping data in Europe for October 2012.
The study shows that 59 percent of internet users between the ages of 16 and 74 shopped via the internet in 2012. Great Britain has the most online shoppers, with 82 percent of its population having shopped online in 2012. Romania was at the bottom of the ranking with only 11 percent. Slovakia, with 56 percent, was only a little behind the EU average.
During the pre-crisis year of 2008, 50 percent of internet users in the EU shopped online, while in Slovakia it was 32 percent. This shows a significant increase in the popularity of online shopping in Slovakia.
“Between 2008 and 2012 online shopping spread among the internet population in Belgium and Slovakia,” wrote the NBS, as cited by the SITA newswire. The Eurostat study however contained neither volumes nor average sums of the purchases.
The NBS also pointed out that Slovaks purchase more goods and services from sellers outside Slovakia in other EU member countries than an average European, and that an unemployed Slovak is a more likely to shop online than an average unemployed European.
Slovaks most frequently buy clothes and sporting goods via the internet, with 31 percent of internet users having purchased these commodities online in the past 12 months, up from 13 percent in 2008. The percentage of those who order travel and holiday accommodation online increased from 6 to 15 percent, while the share of those buying books, magazines and e-learning material online grew from 7 to 17 percent. While the UK registered the biggest share of internet users who buy food and groceries via the internet, 21 percent, up from 14 percent, in Slovakia it was only 4 percent, an increase from 1 percent in 2008.
