Bulgaria Still Behind Most of EU in Mobile Shopping

Business | May 19, 2017, Friday // 09:23
Bulgaria: Bulgaria Still Behind Most of EU in Mobile Shopping

While Bulgaria is making major progress in technology, Bulgarians still aren’t taking advantage of mobile shopping in keeping with most of the rest of the EU. Even so, e-commerce is gaining momentum and it is expected that by the year 2021, the country will have made major steps forward. Despite this, it is yet still not projected to be in keeping with the rest of the continent. Those companies exploring entering the world of e-commerce are urged to take note of success stories coming out of the UK, the US, and Germany. Much can be gained by marketing patterned after successful NYC SEO and e-commerce platforms that are effective in the UK and throughout mainland Europe.

Small and Poor but Major Growth Expected in Coming Years

In a country where there are seven million people, the GDP remains relatively low at billion USD, according to 2015 World Bank figures. All figures are calculated on the world’s strongest currency so as to avoid confusion between the , the £, and other currencies relevant to trade in Bulgaria. At the current time, the GDP per capita remains quite low at just about ,000 but is expected to climb to almost ,000 within the next four years. Year-on-year, the CAGR, Compound Annual Growth Rate, is expected to reach an impressive 4.5 percent.

Bulgarian eCommerce Expected to See Major Growth

At the moment, of those seven million people, approximately 2.5 million people do some amount of shopping online and the number of e-commerce users is expected to grow by at least one million people in the above stated time period. In other words, by 2021 it is projected that approximately 3.5 million Bulgarians will be shopping online some of the time. At the moment, the average shopper only spends about 0 USD a year and by 2021 that is only expected to grow by a few dollars, but it is necessary to understand that almost 90 percent of Bulgarians earn lower than minimum wage.

Surprisingly Low Mobile Statistics

At a time when the rest of the world has gone mobile crazy, Bulgarians don’t seem to have caught the bug. Although 57 percent of Bulgarians have Internet access and by 2021 it is expected there will be an additional 7.5 percent added to that number, smartphone penetration is much lower at 43 percent currently but projected to grow to 61 percent within the next four years. The surprising factoid in all this is the relatively low number of people who shop online via their mobile devices.

Currently, 89 percent of shoppers claim to make one or more purchases a year online, but of those, only eight percent make purchases via a mobile device. This is exactly opposite to e-commerce trends throughout most of the rest of Europe and the US where most people shop via cell phones. Of the eight percent making e-commerce transactions on mobile devices, five percent use their mobile phones and three percent use tablets. It’s interesting to note that Bulgaria has yet to trend towards mobile but that, too, is expected to rise in the coming years. As a result, Bulgarian businesses may want to start learning about mobile marketing to capture their share of the mobile market as Bulgaria catches up with the times.

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