长沙USDT低价出售|【唯一TG:@heimifeng8】|电报盗号系统免杀破解技术✨谷歌搜索留痕排名,史上最强SEO技术,20年谷歌SEO经验大佬✨Huge spending shift back to stores in UK, Europe markets
Nigel TAYLOR Published
July 18, 2025
If you wanted evidence of how tough e-tailers have been finding it, this report highlights just how strong the shift back to physical retail across the UK and Europe has been.
Online-only retailers that pulled ahead during the pandemic “are now falling behind their omnichannel competitors”, the report from global professional services firm Alvarez & Marsal (A&M), in partnership with Retail Economics, says.
Its analysis found that across the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and France, “there has been a significant shift back towards traditional bricks-and-mortar stores”. Across these markets, online sales overall fell by €18.2 billion (-5.8% year on year) in 2025, while in-store sales rose by €198 billion over the same period.
That said, despite total online sales declining in 2025, digital-only retailers did see sales grow in Europe by 4.2%. Yet this was considerably lower than the five-year average annual growth figure of 29%. Clearly, omnichannel retailers lost some of their e-sales as spending shifted back to stores, while pureplays saw growth, but not spectacular growth.
And despite losing some e-sales, those omnichannel retailers saw sales growth of 12.1% in 2025. The gap between pureplay and omnichannel performance was even more pronounced in the UK where online sales fell by 9.8% while in-store sales rose by 11%.
The researchers arrived at their conclusions after they measured a range of data points for over 100 stock exchange-listed European retailers. Included were financial metrics, online performance presence and metrics, social media activity and engagement, proportion of digital job roles, and more. This helped the researchers segment companies into three cohorts: Digital Leaders, Digital Followers and Digital Latecomers.
A&M’s analysis shows retailers that have continually invested in digital transformation over the last eight years have seen better financial returns. The Digital Leaders (digitally advanced players that also have a robust offline model) have seen average sales growth of 4.9% in the period. Meanwhile, for the online-only so-called Digital Followers, the figure is only 2.6%, while the Digital Latecomers have seen negative growth of 0.4%.
The company’s Head of Retail and Consumer in Europe, Erin Brookes, said: “Customer journeys have become more complex as shoppers unconsciously flit between digital and physical channels on the path of least resistance towards purchase. This can differ according to category, product, country, smartphone penetration, connectivity, and by consumer characteristics such as age, income, and digital savviness. In each case, the journey should be engineered to be seamless across all touchpoints: retailers that have invested heavily in building an omnichannel model are starting to reap the rewards.”
Not that pureplay e-tailers have been a disaster. She added that we’re “still seeing online-only players like Boohoo growing their share of a declining market.”
Over the last five years, “online-only retailers have, on the whole, benefited from access to cheap capital, fast and stable supply chains, predictable levels of demand and weak competition.”
But the tide could be turning. Recently, higher interest rates, volatility in supply chains and pressures on consumer spending as a result of the cost-of-living squeeze “have reversed these tailwinds. This has been manifested in market valuations: online-only retailers across Europe have seen their share price plummet by almost 70% since the beginning of 2025, while omnichannel players have experienced a 12% rise.”
The report emphasises how the retail industry in Europe has reached an inflection point: “The tailwinds enjoyed by early adopters of digitalisation and online only retailers have faded, and retailers that are capturing more competitive advantage are those that have adopted an omnichannel model while embracing digital transformation throughout the entire value chain.”
A&M’s MD and Head of Digital in Europe Jean Laurent Poitou, added: “The operating environment that retailers have had to contend with has swung, pendulum-like, over the past three years. We’ve witnessed the growth of in-store, a surge in online-only during the pandemic and then customers favouring in-store again, all in the pursuit of a frictionless and personalised retail experience.
“Digital ‘leaders’ have outperformed in the past, but they need to be alive to the next wave of disruption. New technologies like predictive analytics, machine learning and generative AI, as well as the surge in demand for credit options like BNPL, will enable early movers to fine tune their offerings – whether omnichannel or online-only – to drive customer loyalty and retention. Slower adopters – our ‘followers’ and ‘late comers’ – should act quickly to adapt their business models to avoid being left behind in what is increasingly becoming a level playing field.”