Young people in Estonia make millions of online purchases every year

The number of online purchases among young people in Estonia increased by almost three times last year and the turnover of transactions did not remain too far behind, SEB’s study indicates. According to the statistics, young people aged 18–25 years old made 1.2 million online purchases in 2019 and spent 20.5 million euros. Every third young person is a regular buyer from online shops and more than half of them prefer shopping online once every couple of weeks.

“The growing activeness of young people in online channels arises on the one hand from the developments in e-commerce, and on the other, from the better income of young people in recent years. Both the share of young people getting a higher than average wage and the number of people being paid an average wage has increased in recent years. The patterns of online shopping reveal that at the moment, young people are still concentrated on the most popular online shops (e.g., Alibaba, Amazon, AliExpress), but purchases from certain apps are gaining ground (purchases initiated via chat applications like Facebook Messenger, Instagram), although currently, only 10% of young people are using them according to our assessment,” said the Member of the Board of SEB, Ainar Leppänen, on the online shopping habits of young people.

In line with the overall trend, the average amount of a purchase also decreased last year among the young, but the drop was only a few euros (from 19.43 euros in 2017 to 17.23 euros in 2019). The average purchase amount among young people clearly remains under the 33 euros an average customer spends on a purchase. The younger population also clearly prefers foreign shopping channels that make up more than 85% of all their purchases. In total, young people paid 17.8 million euros to foreign sellers and local merchants were left with 2.7 million euros.

SEB's online shopping analysis is based on a customer survey conducted by the bank on e-commerce, and an analysis of e-commerce card transactions during the period 2017–2019.

More information:

Evelin Allas
Communications Manager
Marketing and Communications Division
SEB Pank

Phone: +372 665 5649
Mobile: +371 511 1718
Address: Tornimäe 2, 15010 Tallinn
E-mail: evelin.allas@seb.ee