Berlin (Reuters) - The gloomy buying mood in the wake of the war in Ukraine is slowing down online retail in Germany, which has been spoiled by success since the coronavirus pandemic.

Sales of goods fell by 8.8 percent in nominal terms - i.e. not adjusted for inflation - to 90.4 billion euros in 2022, according to the industry association bevh on Thursday. However, this was still 24.5% more than in 2019 before the virus pandemic. Turnover from digital services such as vacation bookings or concert ticket sales improved significantly by almost 40% to 11.25 billion euros within a year. However, they were still a good 42% below the pre-crisis level. For the current year, the bevh expects e-commerce with goods to grow by 4.8%.

"Online retailers are also feeling the effects of the crisis," said Gero Furchheim, President of the German E-Commerce and Distance Selling Trade Association (bevh). "The noticeable reluctance to buy, especially for non-essential items, reflects people's current uncertainty combined with the increased cost of living." Online retail initially got off to a robust start in 2022 with double-digit growth rates, but suddenly slipped into the red when war broke out in February.

"Spontaneous purchases are currently collapsing, particularly in fashion, hobbies and leisure as well as consumer electronics," said Martin Groß-Albenhausen, Deputy Managing Director of bevh. By contrast, sales of everyday orders for food, beauty products and medicines, which have increasingly migrated to online retail during the pandemic, have remained stable. "Those who used e-commerce for their daily needs during the lockdowns will continue to shop online in the future." The sharpest decline in online retail was among so-called multichannel providers. However, according to the association, these were probably able to partially compensate for the lack of online sales by increasing sales in stores.

Inflation averaged 7.9% in 2022, the highest rate since the Federal Republic of Germany was founded. The German government expects inflation to fall to 6.0% this year. "We have broken the inflation trend," said Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck in the Bundestag. Private consumption is expected to fall by 0.2 percent in 2023.

The parcel industry also felt the effects of high inflation and energy prices during the important Christmas period and delivered fewer items. According to a study by KE-CONSULT Kurte&Esser, the German Parcel and Express Logistics Association (BIEK) reported that the volume of courier, express and parcel shipments in November and December fell by eight percent to around 725 million shipments, below the results of the strong previous year 2021. According to Deutsche Post, it coped well with the "heavy Christmas traffic" and explained: "In December, we had up to eleven million parcels in our network on the busiest days."

(Report by Klaus Lauer, Matthias Inverardi and Christian Krämer, edited by Kerstin Dörr - If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets)).