E-Commerce Market in the UK: With a Focus on Amazon

The UK e-commerce market is worth £74 Billion, including e-commerce websites as well as different electronic market places. There are 1,8 million active websites, 509 000 of which are e-commerce websites. And 268.000 of this e-commerce enabled websites are shipping products. 

To see the picture in the UK even better, it is also important to know that 91% of UK population uses internet and 17% of all retail sales are realised online. And most importantly, the UK is the third largest mobile commerce market worldwide. To provide a more comprehensive picture, from the e-commerce market worth perspective, China comes the first followed by the US and the UK. Japan and Germany are number four and five respectively.

Amazon is one of the leading e-retailers in the world with around 232 billion U.S. dollars worth net sales in 2018. Major sources of Amazon’s revenues are e-retail sales of electronics and other products, as well as third-party seller revenues, subscription services and Amazon Web Services (AWS) activities. With its global scale services, Amazon is also considered one of the most valuable brands worldwide.

Looking deeper into Amazon’s worldwide revenues based on the financial reports provided by Amazon itself shows us the following picture:

  • For the quarter ending September 30, 2019 Amazon’s revenues reached $69.981B, which means a 23.69% increase year-over-year.
  • Amazon’s revenue for the twelve months ending September 30, 2019 was $265.468B, meaning a 20.14% increase year-over-year.
  • Amazon annual revenue for 2018 was $232.887B, a 30.93% increase from 2017.
  • Amazon annual revenue for 2017 was $177.866B, a 30.8% increase from 2016.
  • Amazon annual revenue for 2016 was $135.987B, a 27.08% increase from 2015

Why are we focusing on Amazon while writing about the e-commerce market in the UK? It’s because Amazon is the dominant actor in the UK e-commerce market. 86% of UK online shoppers use Amazon. According to the estimations of Euromonitor International, Amazon captured a 31% share of UK online retail sales in 2018.

Upon that, Amazon’s reported UK revenues reached $14,5 Billion in 2018. This leads to a growth rate of 23.3% in 2018, which is just below its growth rate in 2017 (24.9%) but above the 14.5% of growth in the UK internet retail sales. To see the UK revenues of Amazon over time, please check the graph below.


As a result, it is fair to say that Amazon is the dominant actor in the UK e-commerce market and therefore, as a marketplace, it is the best option to choose in entering the UK e-commerce market.

London Bridge Project 

The London Bridge Project (LBP) is the leading consultancy and management company focused on sales consultancy, end to end sales management and business development.

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