Netherlands 2018 Leader in Global Online Shopping

The Netherlands placed top of UNCTAD’s Business-to-Consumer (B2C) E-commerce Index 2018, released on 10 December, as the most prepared country in the world for online commerce.

The index shows that eight of the top ten countries for online shopping are in Europe, with index values extremely close and a range of just four points between first and tenth rank. The Netherlands, which ranked third in 2017, ousted Luxembourg, which dropped out of the top ten as a result of a sharp fall in its postal reliability score.

“The Netherlands has high values for most indicators, particularly in secure servers – a proxy for e-commerce shops – where it is top-ranked among all 151 countries included in the index,” Shamika N. Sirimanne, director of UNCTAD’s division on technology and logistics, said. “The country also has the second highest proportion of online shoppers in the world – 76% of the population aged 15 and older.”