Romania's e-commerce market grows 4.7% y/y in Q1 - report

This shows that double-digit growth is probably a thing of the past and the industry has to get used to it, Innoship co-founder and CEO Daniel Nicolae was quoted as saying on Monday.

Nicolae added that companies in the European e-commerce sector must work together with lawmakers and governments to protect their local players following China's aggressive entry into the market.

According to the report, Hungary, Bulgaria and Greece remained the main destinations for cross-border deliveries from Romania. Orders coming from Hungary showed a 49% jump in the first quarter of 2024, those from Bulgaria posted 38% growth, while those from Greece climbed by 14%.

In May 2023, Romanian retailer eMAG extended its cross-border fulfillment programme to Bulgaria and Hungary, following related investments in technology and logistics totalling 3 million euro ($3.26 million) in 2022.

The percentage of consumers who prefer to pick up their deliveries from self-service boxes, where they key in a unique code to access their parcel, increased to 15% in the first quarter from 12% in the prior-year period.

Cash on delivery payments decreased by an annual 2.3% to 50.2% in the first three months of 2024. Meanwhile, the percentage of cash on delivery payments in the Czech Republic and Poland is 36% and 22%, respectively, showing that consumers in these countries place much higher trust in retailers. Innoship estimates that the ratio of cash on delivery payments in Romania will continue to inch down, stabilising around the 41% mark by 2030.

The report was based on an Innoship analysis of over 24 million deliveries from 220 retailers.

Innoship is a SaaS delivery management platform founded in Romania in 2019, offering technology solutions to over 200 medium and large retailers across Europe. In 2022, Polish logistics company Alsendo bought a majority stake in Innoship.

($=0.9204 euro)