Stephanie Chevalier
E-commerce research and editorial expert
Online marketplaces in France - statistics & facts
Online marketplaces have long connected buyers and sellers of all backgrounds in a seemingly effortless manner, putting themselves at the forefront of e-commerce. In recent years, and especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the popularity of these one-stop shops has skyrocketed. In 2020, revenue generated by online marketplaces in France grew by nearly 30 percent compared to the previous year. In addition to showing a clear preference for e-commerce sites with a marketplace, a survey revealed that nine out of ten French consumers expected to use these platforms in the same or higher proportions in the future.
International marketplace giants vs. local sites
Online marketplaces dominated the list of most-visited e-commerce sites in France in 2021. While U.S. giant Amazon came out on top with an average of more than 164 million visits, French consumer-to-consumer (C2C) marketplace Leboncoin was hot on its heels, surpassing 142 million. Several domestic platforms are moving their chips to compete with the big international players in this segment. When asked which brands they had shopped through online in the previous year, over 30 percent of French consumers said they had used Cdiscount, and almost 25 percent said they had purchased from Fnac's site, putting them ahead of foreign competitors such as AliExpress. Yet as far as apps are concerned, international marketplaces have left local ones out of the picture, with AliExpress, Amazon, and Wish rounding out the top three most downloaded marketplace apps by French users.Online shopping and collaborative consumption
Interest in more economical and sustainable consumer alternatives is growing and has given rise to a flourishing second-hand market. In France, C2C transactions on platforms such as Vinted, eBay, or local marketplace Leboncoin have catapulted from this trend. In 2021, Leboncoin was not only the second most visited e-commerce site by French consumers, but also ranked, after Vinted, as the online shopping site with the longest visit time. Although the number of visitors to Leboncoin has progressively increased over the past years, this growth is slowing down as its audience ages. Seizing a gap in the market, new competitors are emerging from out and within France. An example of this is Back Market. Founded in 2014, the marketplace specializing in refurbished electronic products became the most highly valued French unicorn in 2021. With the redistribution market thriving as it is, competition in this sector is just beginning to heat up.
