Romanian E-Commerce Market Size at the end of 2016: €1.8BN

Furthermore, the €1.8BN only represent etail (tangible goods sold online), thus not including services, the payments of bills, plane tickets, event tickets, hotel reservations, travel and so on. Therefor, it is likely that the value of the total online shopping market in Romania is considerably bigger.

GPeC is for 12 years the most important e-commerce event in Romania which also gathers and publishes the Romanian e-commerce market official figures every year – The Romanian E-Commerce Market Report. Here is the main data and information for last year according to the GPeC report:

The latest studies show that Romania’s population decreased (from 19.8M to 19.4M inhabitants in 2016) and, out of the total, approximately 11.2M use the Internet (slightly up compared to the total of 11M Internet users in the end of 2015). In the same time, the Internet penetration rate grew from 56% in 2015 to 58% in 2016.

The smartphone penetration rate in Romania also raised significantly in 2016, reaching to 70% (from 50% the previous year). With more and more Romanians owning smartphones and using them for online browsing and shopping, it is only normal that the top Romanian online shops reported a significant increase when it comes of mobile device traffic: over 50% of online shops visits come from mobile devices. Moreover, the number of mobile orders from mobiles also increased, from 25-30% in 2015 to 35-40% in 2016.

However, according to Consumer Report 2016, Romanian people use mobile phones primarily for Social Networking, E-Mail, Content Video viewing, Browsing and Gaming, in this order.

“Mobile”, the trend in 2016, maintains the course in 2017, and Romanian online shops got the idea, although they still have issues with optimization for mobile and with the loading time.

Wage increase, combined with a decreased of VAT and general prices helped growing Romanian economy in 2016 and also pushed the e-commerce’s growth. On average, Romanians buying online made 8.4 buys last year, up from 8.2 in 2015 and 8.1 in 2014.

Black Friday was the day in 2016 when Romanians bought online for €130M, €30M more compared to 2015. According to the top Romanian e-shops, Romanians appetite for discounts was the reason why online shops started having more and more frequent “Black Friday”- style  campaigns (sometimes ran under different names), with each campaign of this type generating a 30% increase of online sales.

When it comes of online card payments, the volume in 2016 raised to €745M, from €514M in 2015, which shows a growth of 44.9%. From the total €745M, RomCard processed €575M in 3D Secure system, while the rest of €170M were processed by Netopia mobilPay, with both companies registering important growths compared to 2015 (when the numbers were €394M for Romcard and €120M for mobilPay).

Romanians pay online with card mainly for services and less for etail. The preferred payment method for Romanian etail is still cash on delivery – circa 90% of orders are paid cash on delivery – , while 2-3% of payments are via online banking, micropayments by SMS and others.

In 2016, 64% of Visa card online payments were directed towards international online merchants (mainly plane tickets, travel and hotels, online adult services and casino services). The average order value on Visa cards went from €40 in 2015 to €50 in 2016.

When it comes of online card payments, Romanians are using them to pay bills, buy products online and paying for telecom services.

The number of online shops in Romania last year remained similar in 2016 compared to previous year, with circa 5.000 active online shops. Still, there are in total over 20.000 Romanian online shops that generate sales and have an active add-to-cart button.

The top of e-commerce categories in 2016 hasn’t changed compared to 2015: Electro-IT&C, Fashion & Beauty and Home & Deco. Compared to 2015, the average transaction order decresed for all categories except Home & Deco (where the average order doubled). Also, Romanians spent 474 RON/transaction in 2016, more then double compared to the 220 RON/transaction during the previous year.

For Electro-IT&C, the average order value decreased (from 680 RON in 2015 to 669 RON in 2016), the same happening to Fashion & Beauty (from 180 RON in 2015 to 161 RON in 2016) and for the Baby, Kids & Toys (from 210 RON in 2015 to 203 RON in 2016). Still, even though the money spent per order were less, the number of transactions grew significantly:

2016 showed the same growth trend as the last few years bringing approximately 30% increase for the Romanian e-commerce market. The e-commerce industry is one of the few Romanian industries growing constantly every year

Andrei Radu,

CEO & Founder GPeC.

The information from the report was put together in the above infographic by Silkweb.

The information in this report was provided, in alphabetical order, by 2Performant, Breeze Mobile, Consumer Report 2016, GPeC, Internet World Stats, mobilPay, RomCard, Visa România.

GPeC is the most important e-commerce event in Romania, the only online event happening for 8 months every year. With a 12-year tradition, GPeC is the perfect mix of Conferences, Workshops, Expo, Intensive E-Commerce Trainings and the Romanian Online Shops Competition and Romanian E-Commerce Awards which are meant to contribute to the overall Romanian e-commerce growth. GPeC Summit, the Spring Edition, will take place in May 2017.