Buchs, 27 September 2024. Online marketplaces for private individuals are booming: four out of five online shoppers in Switzerland regularly buy or sell used items online – and the trend is on the rise. Prices are the main driving force for buyers, whereas contributing to the circular economy and a lack of space at home are what matter most to sellers. These are the findings of a special analysis by DPD’s E-Shopper Barometer, which the parcel service provider published to mark Secondhand Day in Switzerland on 28 September.
In no other European country do private individuals sell more second-hand goods online than in Switzerland: 57 per cent of the regular online shoppers who responded to the survey said that they use customer-to-customer (C2C) platforms to sell their items. The European average is just 46 per cent. The differences are significant: whereas few used products are sold online in Romania (29 per cent), almost as many are sold in the Netherlands and Spain (55 per cent each) as in Switzerland.
Private individuals make eleven online purchases per year
For Swiss online shoppers, the primary reason for selling on a C2C platform is to pass on intact products that they no longer need, followed by the need to free up space at home. The motivation to make money is ranked third.
Compared to the rest of Europe, Swiss online shoppers are not noted for purchasing used products. Compared to the European average of 58 per cent, just 48 per cent use online marketplaces for this purpose. Lower prices are the reason most frequently given for C2C purchases by far. Supporting the circular economy is another key factor. On average, Swiss online shoppers purchase something from a private individual eleven times per year.
Overall, 82 per cent of Swiss online shoppers said that they used a C2C platform to buy or sell items last year – significantly higher than in the previous year (76 per cent). Around one third of them had only started using C2C platforms in the past five years. Almost half of online shoppers now purchase more second-hand products than in the past. These are the findings of a special analysis by DPD’s E-Shopper Barometer in 2023, which surveys 24’000 online shoppers in 22 European countries each year – including more than 1’000 people in Switzerland.
Driven by the pandemic and environmental awareness
The number of users of second-hand platforms has risen sharply in all European countries since 2020. The E-Shopper Barometer attributes this to two key trends: greater awareness of sustainability and the circular economy on the one hand, and the economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on the other. Both factors together have led to a large majority of the population being open to private online trading of used products.
‘We expect the online second-hand market to continue growing strongly over the next few years. As a parcel service provider, we have been prepared for this trend for a long time. The E-Shopper Barometer clearly shows that the circular economy is tremendously important to users of C2C platforms. Our sustainable deliveries embrace this: our already highly electrified fleet of vehicles will be completely emission-free on a local level from 2030. We are also developing digital solutions to link the online marketplaces seamlessly with our systems’, says Tilmann Schultze, CEO of DPD Switzerland.
