Marketplaces & E-commerce · 2026
Marketplaces & E-Commerce Leadership Report 2026
Platform economics and the executive talent driving digital commerce growth
Executive Summary
European e-commerce has crossed into major-market scale and shows no signs of decelerating. ECDB's E-Commerce in Europe 2026 report puts European e-commerce revenues at US$895 billion in 2026 — projected to surpass US$1 trillion by 2028 — growing at +8.5% year-on-year, ahead of North and South America at 7.7%. Eurostat's 2025 enterprise ICT survey (covering 2024 data) found that 23.59% of EU enterprises now conduct e-sales — up from 18.93% a decade ago — with e-sales accounting for 19.49% of total EU enterprise turnover. Among large enterprises, nearly half (48.48%) conduct e-sales, representing 24.24% of their total turnover. The market is mature, structurally growing, and bifurcating: well-capitalised platforms with genuine network effects are pulling away from the field, while weaker models have been rationalised out. The leadership that creates value in this environment is qualitatively different from what drove growth in the 2019–2022 expansion era.
Marketplaces have become the dominant format of global e-commerce — and their lead is growing. BCG's research found that marketplaces now account for 67% of global e-commerce sales, up from 40% just a decade ago, and are growing at 6× the rate of traditional first-party e-commerce. McKinsey's State of Consumer 2025 found that over 80% of German and UK consumers shopped at an online-only retailer in the past month, while nearly 40% use grocery delivery every week — penetration rates that would have seemed implausible in 2018. Yet nearly three-quarters of European consumers simultaneously report trading down in response to inflationary pressure, creating a bifurcated consumer behaviour — high frequency, higher price sensitivity — that defines the commercial leadership challenge in European e-commerce today.
Agentic AI is rewriting the competitive rules of e-commerce faster than any prior technology shift. BCG's October 2025 report found that GenAI traffic to US retail sites grew +4,700% year-on-year by July 2025, with LLMs directly influencing up to 20% of purchasing decisions. 96% of retailers globally are exploring or implementing AI agents — but only 10% have successfully integrated them across their workflows. KPMG's 2025 Consumer & Retail CEO Outlook — surveying 120 consumer and retail CEOs across companies with revenues above $500M — found that 64% now rank AI as a top investment priority (up from 57% in 2024), 82% say AI is reshaping employee development, and 70% are concerned about competition for AI talent. The executives who understand how to compete in a world where AI agents mediate product discovery, and where agentic commerce may represent a $1 trillion US market by 2030, are found in a very small population — and almost none of them are actively available.
Key Findings
Marketplaces = 67% of global e-commerce — and the model is still accelerating
BCG's data is the most striking structural fact in global e-commerce: marketplaces have grown from 40% to 67% of global sales in a decade, at 6× the growth rate of traditional first-party e-commerce. Over 60% of Amazon's unit volume comes from third-party sellers; Walmart's marketplace grew more than 30% in each of the last four quarters, with seller count growing 20% in the same period. The VP of Supply and Head of Marketplace Operations — responsible for seller acquisition, catalogue quality, seller success, and pricing governance — are the highest-leverage but most systematically under-invested executive roles in platform businesses. Marketplaces that treat supply-side leadership as a second-tier function are consistently outcompeted by those that treat it as their primary strategic asset.
Agentic commerce: 96% of retailers exploring AI agents — only 10% have integrated them
BCG's 'Agentic Commerce is Redefining Retail' (October 2025) frames this as the most significant structural shift in retail since search engines. AI agents — embedded in platforms like Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Google Gemini — are already influencing up to 20% of purchasing decisions, with AI-agent visitors spending 32% longer on site, viewing 10% more pages, and bouncing 27% less than traditional shoppers. Yet 96% of retailers exploring AI agents have only 10% who have genuinely integrated them. Gartner projects a -25% decline in global search traffic by 2026. The CMO who built their entire acquisition model on Google search and paid social is navigating an accelerating platform shift — and boards are urgently looking for leaders who have already built in the post-search environment.
77% of retail CEOs say AI upskilling is a critical challenge — and 70% are losing the AI talent competition
KPMG's Consumer & Retail CEO Outlook (120 CEOs, revenues above $500M) found that 77% of retail leaders cite workforce AI upskilling as a critical challenge, and 70% are concerned about competition for AI talent. 82% say AI is already reshaping employee development — meaning the transformation is not theoretical. 56% cite ethical and governance challenges as key barriers to scaling AI. The CPO and CMO who can lead the AI capability build — not as a technology project but as a commercial transformation — are precisely the profiles that marketplace boards are searching for and not finding in the conventional executive market.
Large enterprises lead digital commerce — but the SME gap is an emerging executive opportunity
Eurostat's 2024 data reveals a structural gap in European e-commerce adoption: large enterprises (250+ employees) conduct e-sales at a rate of 48.48% (generating 24.24% of turnover online), while small enterprises (10–49 employees) are at 21.38% (8.65% of turnover). This adoption gap — 2.3× between large and small — represents a market opportunity that B2B e-commerce platforms and SME-focused marketplace models are actively building into. The executives who understand how to design commercial models and onboarding journeys for SME sellers and SME buyers — not just enterprise accounts — are a distinct talent category with limited supply.
International expansion into Southern and Eastern Europe remains the primary growth mandate
ECDB's data shows European e-commerce growing at a CAGR of 7.7% through 2029 — but growth rates are highly concentrated in lower-penetration markets. McKinsey's consumer research confirms the opportunity: consumer willingness to use online channels is high even where current penetration is lower, and the infrastructure (logistics, payment rails, consumer trust) to support marketplace expansion into Italy, Spain, Poland, and Turkey has matured rapidly. Country General Managers and Regional CEOs who can adapt marketplace models to lower-penetration markets — understanding local payment preferences, regulatory requirements, and logistics partnerships — are one of the most persistently hard-to-fill profiles in European e-commerce.
Market Landscape
European Marketplace Landscape
ECDB identifies the UK as the largest e-commerce market in Europe, followed by Germany and France. The European marketplace landscape is dominated by a small number of category leaders (Zalando in fashion, Amazon in general merchandise, ManoMano in DIY, Vinted in pre-owned) and a growing cohort of vertical specialists in furniture, sport, beauty, and B2B supplies. The most structurally dynamic segment is second-hand and circular commerce: Vinted, Back Market, and Vestiaire Collective have collectively demonstrated that re-commerce can reach mainstream scale — and these businesses require a distinct executive profile from conventional retail, where supply-side complexity (individual seller experience, quality control, trust mechanisms) is the primary competitive variable.
Chinese cross-border platforms (Temu, Shein, TikTok Shop) represent the most disruptive competitive force in European e-commerce. Their ability to combine aggressive pricing with social commerce discovery has forced European players to accelerate social commerce capabilities and reconsider unit economics assumptions. Meanwhile, the Eurostat data showing only 23.59% of EU enterprises conducting e-sales — despite 10 years of digital push — points to substantial structural growth headroom in B2B and SME-focused marketplace models.
The Agentic Commerce Inflection
BCG's projection of a -25% decline in global search traffic by 2026 is the single most consequential data point for e-commerce commercial leaders. If realised, it would effectively end the performance marketing model that has driven European marketplace growth for the past decade. AI shopping agents — operating autonomously on behalf of consumers, optimising for price, speed, and reliability — will prioritise structured data quality, review scores, and fulfilment metrics over brand equity and paid positioning. The CMO who has spent a career building Google and Meta acquisition funnels faces a platform-level disruption analogous to what print advertising executives faced in 2005.
ECDB's 2026 E-Commerce Trends whitepaper — which specifically highlights agentic commerce and AI-driven traffic and conversion metrics as its primary new focus area — confirms this is already visible in the data. The executives who are being recruited to lead the response are not conventional digital marketers: they are leaders who have operated at the intersection of AI, product, and commercial growth — a profile that barely existed as a distinct executive category two years ago.
Leadership & Talent Trends
Most In-Demand Roles in 2026
CEO/MD (marketplace or e-commerce), VP of Supply / Seller Growth, Chief Marketing Officer (post-search acquisition model), VP of AI Commerce / Head of Agentic Commerce, Head of International Expansion (Southern and Eastern Europe focus), CFO with marketplace economics and unit economics expertise, Head of Sustainability (circular commerce, EU packaging regulation), and VP of B2B Marketplace are the most consistently active searches in 2026.
The most valued executive backgrounds combine: marketplace operations alumni (Zalando, eBay, Delivery Hero, Booking.com, Vinted, Amazon EU), platform commercial leadership (Google, Meta commerce units, TikTok Shop), and direct-to-consumer founders who have built and exited e-commerce operations. The emerging premium is on leaders who have built in agentic/AI-native commercial environments — a profile still rare enough that almost no one with this background is actively available.
What the AI Transition Means for the CMO Brief
KPMG's finding that 82% of retail leaders say AI is already reshaping employee development — and that 77% cite AI upskilling as a critical challenge — reflects a genuine transformation in what the CMO role requires. The performance marketing CMO who built their career on paid acquisition, SEO, and email is facing the same structural disruption as the supply chain executive who built their career on China-centric networks: the environment they were optimised for is changing faster than experience can adapt.
The CMO capable of building an agentic commerce strategy — optimising for AI agent visibility, structured data, and programmatic trust signals rather than ad spend — is the most sought-after commercial executive profile in European e-commerce. This person exists, but they are not applying to job postings. They are being recruited.
Key Search Perspective
Key Search has placed leadership teams at some of Europe's leading marketplaces and e-commerce businesses. The ECDB and Eurostat data confirms what we see in our work: European e-commerce is structurally healthy and growing — but the executive profile that creates value in 2026 is fundamentally different from the profile that created value in 2021. KPMG's data that 70% of retail CEOs are losing the competition for AI talent is not a surprise to us — the commercially experienced AI-native executive is one of the rarest profiles in the European market, and almost none of them are actively looking.
Our most consistent finding in marketplace executive search is that the candidate's relationship with data and commercial ambiguity matters more than their headline experience. The best marketplace leaders — supply-side leaders especially — make high-quality decisions with incomplete signals, at pace, across multiple markets simultaneously. BCG's framing of the agentic commerce challenge captures this well: the executives who will succeed in the next decade of e-commerce are those who can build competitive advantage in environments where the rules of customer acquisition are being rewritten in real time. Evaluating this capacity requires a different kind of search process than a conventional executive shortlist.
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Report Details
- Publisher
- Key Search
- Updated
- 2026
- Read Time
- 10 minutes
- Access
- Free
- Coverage
- EMEA
4–5 Nov 2026 · IFEMA, Madrid
