Retail ecommerce in Western Europe was already growing at a healthy clip, both in aggregate and as a share of overall retail, but we now expect that the pandemic will cause overall spending to increase much faster than anticipated. Even as overall retail declines by 9.9% in the region, we estimate that ecommerce sales will jump by 16.9% this year—well up from our pre-pandemic forecast of 8.8%.

The pandemic has hit Spain hard, affecting all industries within the country, particularly retail.

Across Western Europe, most traditional media will see severe cutbacks in ad spending in 2020, as the disruptive effects of the coronavirus pandemic continue. But TV will see some of the steepest declines.

Retailers across Western Europe are pioneering the use of AI to boost digital sales, and new options for delivery and returns are emerging. Yet Europe’s main markets have been slow to embrace social commerce.

Since early March, the coronavirus crisis has posed an unprecedented threat to the retail industry across Western Europe. In most countries, only retailers that sell food, drugs and other essential items can do so in physical stores.

Ecommerce sales in Spain will grow faster than any other country in Western Europe in the next three years, propelled by the rise of AliExpress and its continued competition with Amazon to be the go-to marketplace.

AI has been a hot topic for a while, and attitudes about the technology vary throughout Western Europe. Still, companies are adopting AI to improve business results.

Across Western Europe, millions of consumers in lockdown shopped online for groceries, household supplies and other essential items, even when supermarkets and many smaller food stores remained open. In December 2019, we had forecast an 8.8% gain in Western Europe retail ecommerce sales this year.

This is something of an anomaly in Western Europe, where print long ago gave way to digital in most countries. The exception for Germany is explained largely by the older skew of the population, and relatively high levels of education and literacy—which mean that significant numbers of younger people also read print media.

This report explores our latest forecast for time spent with media in France and Germany, and how COVID-19 will affect media usage patterns in 2020 and beyond.

What is the impact of COVID-19 on retail in Western Europe this year? The coronavirus pandemic has been a disaster for the retail sector across Western Europe, with physical stores hit especially hard. We estimate that overall retail sales in the region will drop 9.9% this year, to $3.776 trillion (€3.372 trillion). How does France’s retail landscape compare with Western Europe?

We look for that to happen sooner in Germany than in many other parts of Western Europe. TV Ad Spending: Pandemic Effects Hasten the Decline. Despite TV’s long-standing appeal, time spent with traditional, linear programming continues to fall, as consumers and advertisers turn increasingly to digital content. Spending on broadcast and cable TV ads was already decreasing in Germany in 2019.

The coronavirus pandemic has upended countless 2020 ad spending forecasts, ours included. We’re now issuing updated estimates for France ad spending in H1 2020 based on current information about how advertisers will respond.

Across Western Europe, local and regional initiatives have sprung up, providing digital platforms that close technical and logistical gaps for small physical stores. One example in Germany is Einzelheld, launched in March by two small IT firms in Stuttgart, which offers local retailers a quick, straightforward opportunity to sell online without having their own ecommerce site.

Recent research has found that the stringent lockdown in France has boosted ecommerce dramatically as consumers make fewer in-store trips.