Romanian Ecommerce Is Becoming More Multichannel. What Does That Change?
New data from more than 5,000 stores using the Gomag platform points to more sales channels, more automation and increasingly varied ecommerce behavior. The interesting part isn't simply that Romanian ecommerce is growing. It's how businesses are learning to operate across it.
Key Insights
If you’re gearing up to expand your business into Romania, or you’re just starting to navigate the winding routes of Romanian ecommerce, this Insight is for you. Romanian ecommerce isn’t simply getting bigger. It’s becoming more layered. That’s one of the interesting takeaways from Gomag’s eCommerce Pulse 2026, which draws on aggregated data from more than 5,000 active online stores using its ecommerce platform, alongside external research and industry data.
I found that one of Gomag’s conclusions is particularly interesting: integrations with marketplaces and centralized management tools have increased consistently over the past three years. And that development comes alongside several other shifts happening at the same time.
Across stores on the Gomag platform, Q2 GMV reached 635 million lei, 10% higher than Q1, while the number of listed products reached 8.4 million. (BURSA). But it’s when we look at channels, payments, delivery and automation together that the picture gets more interesting.
Romanian ecommerce isn’t moving in one direction
Let’s start with payment options. Almost four in every ten lei generated on the Gomag platform now goes through online payment. At the same time, cash on delivery remains widely available and still accounts for 63% of GMV across the platform. (BURSA).
So while online payment is gaining ground, COD (cash on delivery) is very much still part of the Romanian ecommerce landscape. Delivery tells us something similar. Across more than three million parcels identified in Gomag’s analysis, 87% were delivered to the customer’s home, while 13% went through lockers or parcel machines. (New Money)
Then there’s automation. Gomag’s internal GoBots analysis looked at around 1,700 stores using at least one automation channel. Within that sample, email marketing had 49% adoption, automated product recommendations 39%, order-management automation 29%, CRM 17% and SMS 15%. (BURSA)
Marketplaces add another layer. Gomag reports growing integrations between stores and marketplaces. Separately, a 2026 Cargus survey of 1,013 adults, predominantly from urban areas, found that 61% of respondents considered marketplaces their main online shopping channel. (Cargus).
These numbers aren’t telling us that every Romanian ecommerce business or every Romanian customer behaves in the same way. Most of the operational figures above come specifically from stores running on Gomag. The Cargus figure comes from a separate consumer survey. But together, they give us an interesting view of a market where different channels and different ways of buying increasingly coexist.
More channels change what an ecommerce business has to manage
From a customer journey perspective, this is where I would like to pay more attention. Not because multichannel ecommerce is automatically more difficult. And certainly not because adding another channel automatically creates a problem. It’s simply that the ecommerce experience is no longer happening in one place.
A customer might discover a product through an ad, compare it on a marketplace, visit the brand’s own store, receive a recommendation by email, and then choose between different payment and delivery options.
Another customer might stay almost entirely inside the marketplace. Both can be perfectly good customer journeys. So rather than immediately asking where could this go wrong?, I’d ask something much simpler: what does the customer need from the brand in each of those places? Because the answer won’t necessarily be the same everywhere.
A marketplace listing has a different job from a product page. An automated product recommendation has a different job from an acquisition ad. And an order email certainly doesn’t need to repeat your entire brand proposition.
Consistency isn’t about copying the same message from one channel to another. It’s about knowing what needs to stay consistent (product information, positioning, important promises, delivery expectations, promotion terms) and what can change depending on where the customer meets you.
The customer journey is no longer contained inside the website
This is probably the part of the Gomag findings that interests me most. For a long time, it was relatively easy to put the ecommerce website at the center and think outward from there.
The website still matters enormously. But increasingly, it’s one part of a much wider system. Marketplaces influence discovery and comparison. Email and automation bring customers back. Payment preferences influence the purchase. Delivery continues the experience after checkout. And all of those interactions contribute something to what the customer understands about the business. That doesn’t automatically create inconsistency. But it does make coordination more important.
For brands expanding into Romania, that’s worth thinking about too. Entering the market isn’t simply a matter of translating a website and launching local ads. You’re entering an ecommerce environment with its own marketplace behavior, payment habits, delivery preferences, and ways of shopping. And those things can shape the journey just as much as the words on the website. So the messaging strategy needs to understand the market around the customer journey, rather than simply reproduce a journey built somewhere else.
What the Gomag data is really showing
Gomag describes Romanian ecommerce in 2026 as entering a more mature phase, with businesses increasingly focusing on efficiency, automation and channel diversification. The multichannel part is particularly interesting to me. Not because every new channel creates another problem to solve. But because ecommerce businesses are operating across more environments, while customers have more ways to discover, compare, buy and interact with them. That changes the question quite a bit. It’s becoming less about which channel owns the customer journey and more about how all those different parts work together to create one recognizable experience.
Sources
BURSA: Gomag: Romanian ecommerce enters a phase of maturation
New Money: What data from 5,000+ online stores shows about Romanian ecommerce
Cargus: How Romanians shop online in 2026
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Written by 
Iusti Ikert, Founder of In Between the Lines — a messaging and customer experience alignment studio for scaling product-led brands. I work with growing DTC companies to align brand promise, marketing, and operational delivery so they can scale without friction.
Connect on LinkedIn or follow on Instagram for insights on sustainable growth, messaging clarity, and customer experience alignment.
FAQs
Is Romanian ecommerce becoming more multichannel?
Gomag reports that marketplace integrations and centralised management tools have increased consistently over the past three years, pointing towards more multichannel ecommerce operations among stores in its ecosystem.
Does the Gomag data represent the entire Romanian ecommerce market?
No. Much of the operational data comes from more than 5,000 active stores using Gomag. The report also uses external research and industry data, so individual figures need to be understood according to their original source.
Why does multichannel ecommerce matter for the customer journey?
Because customers can interact with the same business through its ecommerce store, marketplaces, advertising, email, payment, delivery and other environments; each plays a different role in the overall experience.
Does operating across more channels make messaging inconsistent?
Not necessarily. Consistency doesn’t mean using identical messaging everywhere. It means keeping the important things aligned while adapting the message to each channel’s role and context.
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