More than half of euro area shoppers have bought from Chinese Marketplaces: What European brands are getting wrong
28 August 2026
Keith Elliott – Chief Commercial Officer
For years, many European brands have treated Temu, Shein and AliExpress as a fairly straightforward threat. Their products are cheaper, their advertising is relentless and their customers are assumed to be willing to compromise on quality.
New research from the European Central Bank suggests that view is too simplistic. More than half of the people surveyed across the euro area said they had bought something from a Chinese ecommerce platform. In Greece, Portugal and Spain, the figure was above 70 per cent. Even in France and Germany, where adoption is lower, these platforms have already reached a sizeable share of consumers.
This is no longer a niche corner of ecommerce. Chinese marketplaces have become part of the way Europeans shop.
Price is clearly the biggest attraction. Almost two thirds of the purchases recorded by the ECB were worth no more than EUR 25, and 90 per cent were worth EUR 50 or less. At those values, buying something unfamiliar feels like a relatively small risk.
But price is only part of the explanation. The other major attraction is choice. Consumers like being able to find an enormous range of products, including niche items and accessories that may not be readily available from local retailers.
That combination matters. These platforms give shoppers a huge assortment, a constant flow of new products and an easy way to discover things they were not necessarily looking for. Low prices make it easier to act on that discovery.
This is where some established brands misread the competition. They see a cheap product and conclude that the answer is another promotion. In reality, they are competing with an entire shopping experience built around variety, discovery and very low barriers to purchase.
Trying to match Chinese marketplaces on price is unlikely to end well for most European brands. Their cost bases, product standards and brand promises are fundamentally different. More discounting may deliver a short burst of sales, but it also squeezes margin and gives customers another reason to wait for the next offer.
The more useful question is a simple one. Why should somebody choose this product when a cheaper alternative is only a few clicks away?
The ECB research gives brands a good starting point. People who do not use Chinese marketplaces are most concerned about quality, trust and environmental impact. These should be natural strengths for established brands. Yet those strengths are often poorly explained online, or lost altogether through weak content and an inconsistent customer experience.
A familiar logo is no longer enough. The value behind it has to be obvious at the moment a customer is deciding whether to buy.
On a marketplace, the product page often is the brand experience. Customers cannot pick up the item, speak to a sales assistant or see how it has been presented in a shop. They make a judgement based on the images, description, reviews, delivery promise and returns information in front of them.
That makes good content commercially important. Clear information about materials, performance, product safety, warranties and after sales support can reduce the uncertainty that surrounds an unfamiliar purchase. Strong imagery, useful video and credible customer reviews help shoppers understand why one product costs more than another.
Too many established brands still publish product content that was written for a catalogue or a wholesale buyer. It may be technically correct, but it does little to answer the questions an online customer actually has. Chinese marketplaces are very good at making products feel easy to discover and easy to try. European brands need to become much better at making value easy to understand.
A customer cannot buy a brand promise if the product is out of stock. This sounds obvious, yet marketplace inventory is still treated as a secondary allocation by many businesses. A limited range is listed, replenishment is slow and advertising continues even when the most important sizes or colours are unavailable.
That has consequences beyond the immediate lost sale. Poor availability weakens search position, wastes media investment and sends the customer towards a competitor that can deliver now.
Chinese marketplaces have raised expectations around choice and availability. European brands do not need to offer millions of products, but they do need to keep the right products in stock and make sensible decisions about range by country. Demand in Spain will not always mirror demand in Germany, and a single European assortment rarely reflects how customers actually shop across the continent.
Traditional ecommerce has focused heavily on capturing existing demand. A shopper searches for a product or brand, and the retailer tries to win the click. Chinese marketplaces are particularly effective at creating demand. Their feeds, recommendations and constant product refresh encourage people to browse, even when they did not arrive with a specific purchase in mind.
That changes the role of marketplace advertising and content. Brands cannot rely entirely on people searching for a name they already know. They need to introduce products earlier, using retail media, video, creators and stronger storytelling to make those products relevant to new audiences.
This does not mean copying every tactic used by Temu or Shein. It means combining the credibility of an established brand with a more engaging and responsive way to shop.
The growth of Chinese marketplaces is putting real pressure on European brands, particularly in clothing, household goods and electronics. But the ECB findings also show where their proposition is weaker. A large share of consumers remain uneasy about quality, reliability, trust and environmental impact. Most purchases are still relatively low in value.
There is plenty of room for brands that offer products people can trust, dependable service and a clear reason to pay more. The difficulty is that those advantages must now be delivered consistently across every marketplace, every country and every product page.
The winners will not be the brands that discount most aggressively. They will be the ones that understand why consumers enjoy shopping on these platforms and respond with a stronger proposition of their own.
Chinese marketplaces have changed what European customers expect. The answer is not for established brands to become cheaper versions of them. It is for those brands to become clearer, faster and far more convincing versions of themselves.
Source: European Central Bank, What drives euro area consumers to Chinese ecommerce platforms?