DIY chains have the most popular online shops – unless Amazon has a presence

Where Amazon exists, it features strongly in the home improvement category. To be more precise, in the countries on which Amazon focuses - or in which eBay is also prominent - it is squeezing out the online shops of the DIY store chains. This is evident from the latest survey carried out in the context of the European Home Improvement Monitor of the Dutch corporate consultancy firm USP. Thus in Germany and Austria, online shoppers have chosen to buy from a general online retailer for more than half of their DIY product purchases. Great Britain and Italy follow closely behind, with the online shops of DIY store chains being the second most common procurement source.
In those countries where Amazon or eBay is not represented or is not a major player, the DIY store operators occupy the top slot as a purchasing source for DIY products on the Internet. This is the case in the Netherlands, where the DIY chains have an e-commerce market share of nearly two thirds, Belgium, France, Poland, Spain, Denmark and Sweden.
The online shops of (branded) manufacturers are normally the least significant players, except in the case of Great Britain. In some countries, such as Sweden, for example, specialist online retailers have a relatively high market share.