Twice a year, the association for online research (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Online Forschung – AGOF) collects their “internet facts.” If you take a close look at these, you can find some statistics which just don’t fit into the generally negativity surrounding German internet promotional projects like “Neuland” and “Industrie 4.0” etc.

Admittedly, some things won’t change in the next few years: women still use the internet much less than men. The gab widens in the older age groups – 56.1 percent vs. 43.9 percent with those over 60. Germans  still mainly go online to use search engines (86.7 percent) and to read emails (86.4 percent).

But who would have thought that shopping is in third place in the list of the most popular online activities! 73 percent of all internet users over the age of 14 said that they order online. 57.8 percent use online banking.

E-marketers estimate that 81.8 percent of German internet users will order products and services via the internet. That equates to 47.1 million people. Only the UK tops this ratio of online shoppers to residents.

This makes e-commerce more normal in Germany than in any other European country (except the island) and a third of it happens via mobile!

An all-round successful event is how you could sum up the ECC-Forum “Experience and Service in (Online)Trade”, which took place in Cologne yesterday. The weather gods must be soccer fans, because the sun only shone on the concrete block building. This made the terrace, and of course the view of Cologne, all the more tempting. But the varied and class-studded program made time fly.

After Dr. Kai Hudetz’ greeting, Dr. Eva Stüber started the event the with latest statistics from a study on the cross-channel behaviour of customers, published at the beginning of May. The exciting thing here was that pure blooded stationary purchasers are dying out quicker than anyone thought. Cross-channel shopping is the mainstream, but the purely online shopper is rarer in comparison to the last survey. So shopping on all channels is the future, which is further supported by the networked behaviour of “smart natives”.

The experts finally came to the conclusion that, when it comes to the topic sharing economy: instead of feel-good cuddles, early capitalism is coming – truly socially oriented models are doomed to fail. With the end if the sharing app “Why own it?” their timing was just right.

But nothing is as bad as it seems. The share economy approach is missing neither substance, nor does it always have to entail people working outside workers’ rights. The branch is growing and professionalising, which can been seen in the French company BlablaCar’s take over of car sharing services mitfahrgelegenheit.de and mitfahrzentrale.de.

According to a current study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 72 percent of current US citizens who have already used a sharing service want to do it again in the next two years. This shows the growth and positive image gain for the respective companies.