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Eastern Europe remains among the less developed regions for B2C E-Commerce worldwide, and therefore shows significant potential for growth, while the factors driving it vary among countries, from rising consumer confidence to increased Internet and online shopper penetration rates. Within the continent, Eastern Europe remained well below Western Europe in terms of B2C E-Commerce sales in 2014. However, while growth slows down in the advanced markets, the growth rate of Eastern Europe is expected to remain above +15% in the near future.

Among the different countries in the region, various B2C E-Commerce trends become observable.  For instance, M-Commerce is significantly outperforming B2C E-Commerce growth in countries such as Poland and Turkey, and smartphone user penetration is on the rise in the Czech Republic. In Hungary too, the average level of M-Commerce spending in 2015 increased by over two-thirds compared to its value a year earlier.

The cross-border online shopping trend can also be observed in several Eastern European states. In Belarus, Chinese-based online stores were the most popular ones among cross-border online shoppers in 2014, while in Romania, the majority of online card transactions were flowing towards international websites. In Russia, cross-border shopping was among the major trends in 2015, with growth rates nearing +90%, and imports predominantly stemming from China as well.

In the troubled economies of Ukraine and Greece, online shopping via price comparison websites increased in popularity in the last two years, with over two thirds of online shoppers placing orders via this channel in Ukraine, and the same proportion using price comparison sites as a major source of information for their purchases.

Overall, the potential for B2C E-Commerce across Eastern Europe is far from being exhausted, and the markets are likely to continue growing, with trends overlapping and reinforcing each other.

More information about the growing sub-region is available in our reports: “Eastern Europe B2C E-Commerce Market 2015”, while detailed insights about specific markets are available in our “Russia B2C E-Commerce Market 2015” and “Poland B2C E-Commerce Market 2015”.

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