Consumers in Europe increasingly see brands in a much broader context. The public is becoming more alert to the ways companies and brands go beyond advertising and marketing to make other positive contributions—or not. The converse also applies: Brands that don’t step up to the plate, or are linked with counterproductive actions, can easily lose consumer approval.

The emergence of new companies selling direct online has been a big story for some time. Mattress brands Casper and Emma, luggage maker Away, beauty company Glossier, and garment retailer Happy Socks were among the first highly successful direct-to-consumer (D2C) firms, many of them based in Europe.

Retail ecommerce sales in Western Europe rose by 26.3% in 2020, to €481.54 billion ($539.18 billion). The pandemic is fueling other shifts in the retail landscape, too, such as a greater focus on buying local.

The number of monthly Instagram users in Western Europe will rise by 17.0% in 2020 to 132.8 million. That’s more than three times higher than the growth rate we had predicted before the pandemic (5.2%) and equates to 19.3 million new users from 2019.