Brick-and-mortar retailers will bank on digital technology to ease shopper friction points and drive in-store sales.

Following a year of lockdown-related growth in 2020, retail ecommerce sales in Western Europe will continue to rise for the next several years. By the end of 2022, ecommerce sales will account for 14.8% of total retail sales in the region and hit nearly $660 billion.

The Nordic region has taken to subscription streaming services at some of the fastest rates in Western Europe, and indeed the world. Thanks to the local appetite for foreign content, and these services’ appetite for subscribers, the audience there will keep expanding for the foreseeable future.

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.

GWI surveyed internet users ages 16 to 64 in the country for the first time in H1 2021, and many indicators of digital maturity now align with those in Western Europe. For example, 96.8% of those polled owned a smartphone, and 81.3% owned a desktop or laptop. Almost half (48.6%) owned a tablet.

Yet—as in previous surveys—penetration in France remained well below that of several other Western European countries. In Germany, Italy, and Spain, for example, about 56% of respondents had a smart TV this year. Time spent each day with desktops, laptops, and tablets remained considerably higher than time spent with mobile devices, averaging 3:25 and 2:19, respectively.

As recently as last year, Portugal’s digital video landscape was relatively undeveloped compared with other countries in Western Europe. Just 62.7% of internet users polled in H1 2020 had streamed video content in the prior month, for example—though usage was greater in younger cohorts and more affluent homes.

This pattern, typical of many Western European countries, is a far cry from the ones seen in much of Latin America and Asia-Pacific, where mobile time often exceeded live TV time by 2 hours or more. Profound, widespread concerns about data privacy and security, in addition to many older internet users’ apparent indifference, have limited the appeal of some advanced digital devices.

Next year in the UK, digital video ads will make gains, Brexit will continue to complicate ecommerce and data privacy rules, and retailers will reimagine the in-store experience.

Proximity and peer-to-peer mobile payments are on the rise in the UK, thanks to high user adoption of mobile and banking. However, growth is slow, which means that wallet providers looking to crack the market will need to get creative.