According to the CBRE report ‘E-commerce in the post-pandemic era’, the market share of online sales in Poland increased by 55 % from the end of 2019 to the pandemic peak. The total online shopping spend in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe accounts for less than 10 % of all sales on the continent. The most important market is Poland, which accounts for more than 46 % of online shopping in the region.

The Czech Republic is second, with a share of almost 17 %, and Romania is third, accounting for more than 9 % of expenditure.

The pandemic-induced jump in e-commerce growth in Poland was 55 %, in the Czech Republic it reached 48 % and in Romania 25 %. The upward trend after the lifting of the lockdown continued only in Poland. As a result, Poland is currently 3 years ahead of the pre-pandemic trend in online shopping development, while the Czech Republic is 1.3 years behind and Romania 1.4 years behind.

The largest e-commerce markets in Europe are the UK and Germany. Together they account for almost half of all online shopping spend in the region. After the pandemic surge in online sales, its growth continues, albeit at a much lower level than in Poland. Germany is 0.8 years ahead of the growth predicted before the pandemic, and the UK by 0.1 year.

“The vast majority of Europeans prefer traditional shopping. We are already seeing a revival of shopping centres across the continent. The situation is similar in Poland, where strong growth in the e-commerce market is going hand in hand with the development of traditional retail. Poles’ growing fondness for online shopping calls for a strong focus on further integration of both markets in an omnichannel system, thus, even better adaptation of traditional shops to the needs of customers, who increasingly want to see products in person and then order them online or, conversely, buy online but have the option of returning them to a shop in the mall”, assesses Mariusz Majkowski, director in CBRE’s retail space department.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński