The growth rate was lower compared with 2018/2017, when the growth rate was approximately 30%.
The value of over EUR4.3 billion refers to all transactions generated from Romania, towards both local merchants and online stores outside Romania.
“If we work out an average, it means Romanians spent nearly EUR12 million on online shopping every day in 2019, higher than EUR9.86 million – the daily average recorded in 2018”, said Andrei Radu, CEO & Founder GPeC. “However, according to Eurostat, just 23% of Romania’ population shopped online in 2019, placing the country next to last in the European Union, outranking only Bulgaria with 22% – which shows the Romanian e-commerce-ul still has room for growth”.
According to estimates by the main players, the online commerce will keep growing in 2020 too, being expected to exceed the EUR5 billion threshold at the end of 2020.
“The Romanian e-commerce sector confirms the positive trend of the past years; thus, it saw a double-digit growth in 2019 too. The EUR4 billion threshold has been exceeded for the first time, which translates into a 20-22% increase compared with 2018. There is the possibility of overshooting the EUR5 billion mark in 2020”, said Florinel Chiș, Executive Director at ARMO.
For 15 years, GPeC has been the e-commerce representative in Romania. Among others, GPeC centralizes data and publishes every year a report on the Romanian e-commerce sector. An important characteristic of 2019 was the increase of the average value of online shopping on most market verticals. Even if the average value has dropped, the decrease was insignificant and the number of orders was higher, which led to a general increase for the entire e-commerce market by 20-22% versus 2018. According to 2Performant, the biggest increase in the average shopping basket was recorded by the electro-IT&C category, to RON875 in 2019 from RON738.27 in 2018.
Increases in the average shopping basket were also recorded by the following categories: fashion, children’s apparel, pet shop, books, music and film. Other categories seeing increases in the average value of a transaction were home & garden, beauty, auto & moto, adult.
In 2019, the online shopping trend on mobile phones has accentuated, with more and more Romanians preferring to shop online form their mobile phones to the detriment of Desktop, namely, 63.6% shop from mobile phone and 36.4% remained faithful to Desktop.
Countrywide, only 23% of Romania’s population shopped online in 2019 (source: Eurostat), as per an iSense survey, carried out in urban areas and exclusively among internet users, 56% of internet users shopped online at least on a monthly basis, more than 53% in 2018.
According to data provided by online retailer eMAG for GPeC, end-December 2019, the eMAG Marketplace platform registered 20,119 active online merchants, compared with 14,749 end-December 2018. However, not all merchants choosing to sell online, through Marketplace or Ads-type platforms have their own online stores as well, therefore, it is difficult to estimate the number of standalone online stores in Romania.
In 2019, the online shopping trend on mobile phones has accentuated, with more and more Romanians preferring to shop online form their mobile phones to the detriment of Desktop, namely, 63.6% shop from mobile phone and 36.4% remained faithful to Desktop.
Countrywide, only 23% of Romania’s population shopped online in 2019 (source: Eurostat), as per an iSense survey, carried out in urban areas and exclusively among internet users, 56% of internet users shopped online at least on a monthly basis, more than 53% in 2018.
According to data provided by online retailer eMAG for GPeC, end-December 2019, the eMAG Marketplace platform registered 20,119 active online merchants, compared with 14,749 end-December 2018. However, not all merchants choosing to sell online, through Marketplace or Ads-type platforms have their own online stores as well, therefore, it is difficult to estimate the number of standalone online stores in Romania.