Czech e-commerce has experienced its second ever year-on-year decline. Yet the market has shown signs of recovery. In the last quarter of last year, domestic e-shops recorded year-on-year sales growth after almost two years, according to Heureka, and online shopping returned to comparable year-on-year growth as retail, ending the post-coveted return of customers to brick-and-mortar stores. According to Shopsys data, large e-shops in particular succeeded, growing by 6% despite the market decline.
Czech e-commerce experienced its first year-on-year decline of 12% in 2022, when the market cooled after the meteoric growth of the covide period. However, these expectations were not fulfilled in the first three quarters of last year, when, according to Heureka data, e-commerce declined by 13% in the first quarter, 8% in the second quarter and 11% in the third quarter. The market only recovered in the last quarter of last year, when e-commerce recorded its first growth in two years, this time by 2%.
Large e-shops grew while the market declined.
Based on Shopsys’ data, the large e-shops in particular fared best, with a 5% year-on-year increase in sales. “We have confirmed a long-term trend observed across the domestic scene – the big players are growing faster than the others and market consolidation by the big players continues. Large e-shops had a harder time at the beginning of the downturn, as they often take longer to adapt, but last year they have already benefited again from their size, brand recognition and technological readiness,” says Matěj Kapošváry, CEO of Shopsys.
Customers have stopped fleeing from e-stores to brick-and-mortar stores.
Since 2015, domestic shoppers have been shifting significantly from brick-and-mortar stores to online; e-commerce has grown 15 percentage points faster year-on-year than all retail. By 2019, this difference in growth rate was naturally narrowing to a 7 percentage point difference. In the subsequent covid year of 2020, the gap reached a record 25 percentage points. While e-commerce grew by 26% in that year, retail sales grew by only 1%. After the covid restrictions ended in 2021, the growth rate almost leveled off (e-commerce 13% and retail 11%). Postcovid year 2022 then marked the return of customers to brick-and-mortar stores, and for the first time since 2015, retail growth was greater than e-commerce growth (a difference of 9 percentage points).
Last year, 2023 also saw retail sales decline hand in hand with the declining e-commerce market. CSO data (through October 2023) shows that retail sales of non-food items have declined for eighteen straight months. “Based on preliminary data, we can compare the retail growth rate with that of e-commerce last year and it is clear that online commerce has started to grow again at a comparable rate to non-food retail. The market is returning to the trend of previous years, when, except for the post-covenant period, customers did not flee from online towards brick-and-mortar stores, but the opposite,” adds Matěj Kapošváry.
Shopsys helps leading B2B and B2C players to digitalize their sales and succeed in the omnichannel world. For its customers, it is a reliable full-service e-commerce partner with the best technologies and many years of know-how. Among the biggest clients, which are taken care of by over 70 IT experts, are Tescoma, Okay.cz, SCONTO, Mountfield, Mana, Bushman, Démos, B2B Partner, Office Depot or Agata’s World.
Source: Shopsys and CTK
