Central Europe’s ecommerce market just got its annual checkup, and the diagnosis is: stable, predictable, and growing at a pace retailers can actually plan around.
According to a new report from ECDB and Mastercard covering eleven countries, online spending in the region is expected to grow by 8 percent this year, with a similar rate forecast for next year, taking the market from 191.3 billion euros last year to 206.6 billion euros this year, and 223.5 billion euros by 2027.
Germany Dominates, But the Edges Are More Interesting
Size-wise, Germany is by far the largest ecommerce market in Central Europe, growing at just under 8 percent this year. Switzerland is tracking at a similar pace, Austria slightly faster.
What’s actually worth paying attention to is what’s happening in the smaller markets. Poland, the region’s second-largest market, is expected to grow by around 9 percent. Greece is forecast at approximately 11 percent. These are markets where online shopping hasn’t fully saturated yet, meaning there’s still room to be an early mover, grab customer relationships, and build loyalty before the market matures. That window doesn’t stay open forever.
Why Buying Frequency Is the Only Number That Matters Right Now
The report tracks three ways an ecommerce market can grow: more shoppers, higher spend per order, or more purchases per existing customer. In Central Europe right now, the number of purchases per customer is increasing much faster than either the number of online shoppers or the average order value.
In plain terms, the pool of online shoppers isn’t growing dramatically, and people aren’t suddenly spending more per transaction. What’s happening is that existing customers are coming back more often. The report calls buying frequency “the battleground for ecommerce growth”, and if your retention strategy is still an afterthought, that’s a problem.
Austria Is Funding Everyone Else’s Ecommerce. Germany Isn’t.
The report also breaks down how much of each country’s online spending goes to foreign shops rather than domestic ones. Austria has the highest cross-border share in the region, with 44 percent of online spending flowing to foreign webshops. Nearly half of what Austrians spend online is leaving the country entirely, going to shops based in Germany, the Netherlands, and elsewhere.
Germany, by contrast, appears highly self-sufficient, with Amazon.de counted as a domestic player despite its American ownership. German shoppers largely stay within the German ecosystem. Austrian shoppers clearly don’t feel the same loyalty, which is either an opportunity or a problem depending on which side of the border you’re selling from.
Our Take
Acquisition Is Slowing Down. Retention Is Picking Up the Slack.
The 8 percent growth headline is fine, but it’s not the story. The story is that Central European ecommerce has reached a maturity stage where the easy wins, converting people who’ve never shopped online before, are mostly gone. The growth that remains is coming from getting existing customers to show up more often.
That has real strategic implications. If you’re allocating the majority of your marketing budget to acquisition in this region, you’re fighting over a shrinking pool of unconverted shoppers while your competitors quietly build retention infrastructure that compounds over time. Loyalty programs, replenishment reminders, post-purchase flows, personalised recommendations. They’re where the growth actually lives now.
Poland and Greece are worth a separate mention. Higher growth rates in markets with lower current penetration means the acquisition window is still open there, just not for much longer. If you’ve been sitting on expansion plans for either market, the clock is ticking.
Predictable growth sounds boring. But boring means you can plan, invest, and build instead of just reacting. After a few years of ecommerce whiplash, that’s worth more than it sounds.
