Smartphone shopping boosts online trade

Online shopping accounts for an ever bigger slice of the Swiss retail market as shopping via smartphone also becomes more popular with consumers, says a new report. Last year, Swiss consumers placed online orders worth a total of almost CHF 10 billion ($10 billion), according to the "E-Commerce Report 2019" published on Thursday. This represents an increase of 10 percent compared with the previous year. Growth of shopping via mobile phones was particularly strong last year, the report says. As in previous years, foreign companies such as Amazon particularly benefited from Swiss people's desire to shop. Foreign providers have developed more than twice as fast as their local counterparts over the past five years, according to the report. One reason for buying online abroad is that certain products are not available in Switzerland, according to report author Professor Ralf Wölfle of the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW). He said some products were also ...