Irish e-commerce sales to continue strong growth

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jul 18, 2019

E-tail sales in the Republic of Ireland (ROI) should rise just shy of 13% this year, which means they will have more-than-doubled since 2010, according to a report from US-based research firm IBISWorld.

Sales should reach €2.2 billion for 2019 in the five years up to 2024 and although their growth will slow slightly, they’ll see a still-healthy compound annual growth rate of 11.2% to reach €3.8 billion.

The researchers said that the growth will be supported by the normalisation of e-commerce and by expansion in m-commerce as consumers increasingly switch to making purchases on their smartphones.

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And of course, it will also be helped by the ever-increasing number (and variety) of products available via mono- and multi-brand webstores, as well as by customer-pleasing initiatives such as the flexible payment options that retailers are racing to introduce.

And that’s particularly important for the fashion sector as clothing and footwear currently makes up the biggest e-tail product segment. This isn’t likely to change as the overall e-commerce market grows. Fashion should account for 39% of total revenue from e-tail this year, ahead of consumer electronics on 33%.

As far as individual retailers are concerned, Amazon is the only name with a share of more than 5%, while eBay has 3.6% of the market. As these figures indicate, Irish shoppers are very outward-looking and are as focused on buying from international names as from local ones. 

A PayPal survey last year, quoted by the Irish Times, said 84% of those living in the ROI buy from overseas sites.