The value of online retail in Poland will reach PLN 92 billion in 2022. Of this, e-stores will be responsible for 61%, while the remainder will fall to shopping platforms, according to the report “E-commerce in Poland 2022”, published by research firm PMR. The above proportions will remain virtually unchanged throughout the period covered by PMR’s forecast, i.e. until 2027. At the end of the forecast period, the value of e-commerce in Poland will be more than 141 billion zlotys, implying an average annual growth rate of 1% between 2022 and 2027.
“The stabilization of the shares of stores and platforms that we are currently observing marks the end of a certain trend. In 2017-2021, shopping platforms successively increased their share in e-commerce at the expense of e-stores. This was a consequence of the emergence of new players in this channel: Empik, Morele, Amazon, Shopee and Erli, among others, entered the market at that time. Also important was the successive expansion of the offer by platforms already in operation, most notably the market leader Allegro. Our analysis shows that this trend has slowed down: the shares of platforms and e-stores in 2022 have stabilized and will no longer change significantly in the coming years. It can be said that the stage of crystallization of the market structure is over. The Polish e-commerce market has become a mature market,” commented Karolina Szalas, senior retail market analyst at PMR and author of the report.
However, the stabilization of the structure of the e-commerce market does not mean that its growth will slow down. PMR analysts forecast that the value of e-commerce in Poland will grow from PLN 92 billion to more than PLN 141 billion between 2022 and 2027.
“E-commerce still has a lot of growth potential in Poland, but we forecast that it will no longer be the kind of expansion we have seen in recent years. In 2018-2021, the value of e-commerce grew in our country annually by an average of 26%, while in the period 2022-2027 we forecast an average annual growth rate of 11%. The decelerating dynamics is another sign of the Polish e-commerce sector entering the maturity phase,” Szalas added.
According to the PMR report, the factors behind e-commerce development will also change in the coming years. In recent years, a strong driver of growth in this sales channel in Poland was the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting migration of consumers to online shopping. In the coming years, on the other hand, growth will be driven by, among other things, the emergence of younger and younger buyers, for whom online shopping will become an increasingly natural activity. Another factor will be the refinement of offerings by e-stores and platforms. Among other things, companies selling online will introduce free and increasingly fast delivery, as well as introduce innovative services to enrich the shopping experience. An additional driver of growth in both channels of the e-commerce market in the coming years will also be the emergence of new players.
“In the case of the shopping platform channel, plans to launch them have been announced by, among others, the Super-Pharm drugstore and pharmacy chain, the Media Expert chain of stores, and the Intersport and 50Style sporting goods store chains,” Szalas concluded.
In order to be as precise as possible, data from primary and secondary sources were combined when compiling the report. They were collated and cross-checked with each other using econometric modeling and the expert method. For the purposes of the report, PMR, among other things: conducted a survey on a representative sample of 1,235 online shoppers, conducted 43 in-depth interviews with companies operating in the e-commerce market, analyzed the offers of more than 750 online stores and platforms.
Source: PMR and ISBnews
