Online shopping grows in the EU, with Italy at the bottom of the rankings

Brussels – Shopping is increasingly becoming increasingly click-friendly. According to the lates annual survey on the use of information and communication technology (ICT) released by Eurostat, online shopping is now a widespread daily activity in the EU. In 2024, 77 percent of Internet users purchased or ordered goods or services for personal use online. Ordering traffic is up 59 percent from 2014. In ten years, in essence, an increase of 17 percentage points that testifies to how “online shopping in the EU continues to expand,” the European Statistics Institute highlights, confirming a trend already anyway.

The citizen-consumers of Ireland (96 percent), the Netherlands (94 percent), and Denmark (91 percent) were the ones that most use online shopping. On the other hand, the least internet-convinced buyers are Bulgarians, ranking last for purchases via pc or smartphone (57 percent). Even Italy and Romania (each at 60 percent) stand out for the least reliance on the Internet to buy clothes, toys, airline tickets, and everything else.So, what do you buy when you shop online? According to Eurostat, in 2024, the most frequent purchases involved clothing, including sports and non-sports clothing, shoes, and accessories (45 percent of the total). Food deliveries from restaurants, fast food chains, and catering services (21 percent) followed along with cosmetics and wellness products (20 percent) and furniture and home accessories or gardening items (19 percent).

Ranking last for gift preference for oneself or friends were sports equipment, printed books, magazines, newspapers, and health supplements such as vitamins (each with a 16 percent share of total payments made).