Market Intelligence

Italian last-mile delivery market analysis: size, structure and competitive dynamics

Italy counts 94,724 online retailers, with clothing, groceries and beauty leading the mix, average home delivery cost at €6.5 and OOH at €5.8. With continued investment and InPost’s strong market entry, OOH delivery is expanding rapidly and reshaping the competitive landscape. This Italian last-mile delivery market analysis maps the structure, methods and provider portfolios behind the numbers.

Working in last-mile delivery and interested in another competitive market analysis beyond Italy? Let's connect. Download the full report here.

Italian last-mile delivery market analysis

Italy remains one of Europe’s most active e-commerce markets by merchant count and parcel flow. To help last-mile executives benchmark strategy, this report profiles the market composition, delivery method availability and pricing, and the competitive landscape across six core providers: GLS, Poste Italiane, DPD BRT, DHL, InPost, and FedEx (TNT). You’ll see where demand concentrates by category, how pricing positions each method, and how provider client portfolios skew by retailer size and expected growth.

All figures are derived from Tembi’s continuous monitoring and analysis of Italian online retailers and checkout setups, with consistent taxonomy and normalisation to support like-for-like comparisons. Use it to maintain competitive advantage, capture share in attractive segments, and understand market dynamics with clarity.

Quick takeaways

  • Market scale: 94,724 active online retailers with an expected CAGR of 4,5%.
  • Method economics: Average home delivery (non-express) €6.5 vs OOH €5.8; OOH grows, but still underrepresnted.
  • Competitive mix: GLS and Poste Italiane show the broadest share of presence; first-position frequency is led by GLS, followed by DPD BRT and Poste Italiane.
  • White-label checkout: over 50% of retailers don't provide delivery choice by brand, just method.

Market overview: size, growth & drivers

Italy’s 94,724-strong retailer base skews to clothes & shoes (≈12.1%), then food & groceries (≈6.7%), and beauty (≈5.4%). The size pyramid shows most merchants are medium, fewer large, and about 1% very large, indicating a wide long-tail with concentrated head accounts that influence parcel mix and service expectations. The latest available data from 2020 suggest that around 830 million parcels are shipped domestically each year. Given the latest e-commerce growth estimation of an average annual growth rate of 4.5%, parcel volumes could now be approaching one billion shipments.

Online retailer size distribution in Italy

Delivery provider landscape: who dominates?

GLS and Poste Italiane hold the broadest presence across Italian webshops - GLS appears in 48.7% of retailer checkouts and Poste Italiane in 46.3%. DPD BRT, DHL, InPost, and FedEx (TNT) follow, forming the rest of the competitive landscape.

Share of presence visualises which delivery provider is working with the most retailers.

When looking at the first delivery option offered to shoppers, GLS leads with roughly 30%, followed by DPD BRT (26%) and Poste Italiane (22%).This ordering pattern reflects how retailers prioritise providers based on network reach, reliability, and negotiated terms rather than pure visibility.

Across Italian retailers, GLS holds the first position in 29.8% of checkouts.

In short:

  • GLS commands the widest network and often the top checkout position.
  • Poste Italiane mirrors that reach with strong national coverage.
  • DPD BRT competes closely in second- and third-position slots, supported by regional partnerships.
  • InPost and DHL show smaller overall shares but specialise in lockers and express shipments respectively.
This chart visualises how often each provider appears across the first four checkout slots.

Delivery methods: consumer options and OOH uptake

Across Italian retailers, home delivery remains dominant, offered by roughly 89% of webshops. Parcel shops (≈9%) and parcel lockers (≈3%) are still at an early stage of rollout, but both formats are expanding as networks and integrations mature.

Looking into delivery methods and deliveyr providers

The limited share of OOH options reflects the market’s current infrastructure capacity rather than consumer demand alone. With continued investment from providers such as InPost, Poste Italiane, and DPD BRT, OOH coverage is expected to increase steadily over the next few years, giving retailers broader flexibility in how they structure delivery choices and costs.

Pricing patterns by method and provider

Pricing across delivery methods follows a clear hierarchy. Home delivery is the most expensive, with DHL and FedEx (TNT) positioned at the higher end in line with their express and international focus.GLS, Poste Italiane, and DPD BRT sit around the market average, reflecting large-scale domestic coverage and standardised pricing structures. InPost maintains the lowest price levels across OOH deliveries, consistent with its parcel-locker model and high network density.

The pricing gap between home and OOH - €6.5 vs €5.8 on average - highlights the economic rationale for providers to keep expanding out-of-home capacity, and in line with most other markets. As networks grow denser, these price differences will continue to influence retailer delivery mix.

Provider portfolios: size mix, categories and growth potential

Tembi’s analysis segments retailer clients by size and growth outlook, showing how each provider’s portfolio is positioned across the Italian market.

Average retailer size score (0–100) for each provider’s client portfolio.

This chart summarises the average retailer size of each provider’s client base on Tembi’s 0–100 scale, where higher scores represent larger and more established webshops.

  • Poste Italiane (48) and GLS (52) sit closest to the market average, reflecting broad SMB and national coverage.
  • DPD BRT (54) leans slightly higher, showing stronger ties with mid-sized merchants.
  • DHL (57), FedEx (61), and InPost (64) serve larger retailers on average - a clear indicator of focus on high-volume or cross-border accounts.
    Together, these values illustrate the spectrum from volume-driven national carriers to enterprise-oriented networks.

Share of small, medium, large, and very large retailers in each provider’s portfolio.

The stacked bars show how each delivery provider’s clients are distributed by retailer size:

  • GLS and Poste Italiane have the broadest spread, with roughly two-thirds of their base in small or medium segments.
  • DPD BRT follows a similar pattern but with a slightly larger share of large retailers.
  • DHL, FedEx (TNT), and InPost have more concentrated portfolios: over half of their clients are categorised as large, and the very large segment grows from 2% for DHL to 4% for InPost.
    This pattern shows a clear divide between carriers anchored in national SMB volume and those positioned around larger enterprise webshops.

Client portfolio growth potential

Using Tembi’s forward-looking Growth Indicator - a composite of product portfolio development, traffic momentum, financial proxies, and export activity - InPost has the highest share of high- and very-high-growth retailers, reflecting its alignment with fast-scaling digital merchants. DHL also skews towards higher-growth segments, supported by its express and cross-border strengths. Meanwhile, GLS, Poste Italiane, and DPD BRT hold proportionally larger bases of mature retailers, providing stability and recurring parcel volume.

Client portfolio growth potential based on Tembi’s Growth Indicator (6–12 month projection).

OOH infrastructure: the locker and parcel shop build-out

Locker and parcel shop networks are entering a phase of rapid expansion across Italy.InPost leads with more than 3,000 lockers installed at the start of 2025. DHL and Poste Italiane jointly reported around 500 lockers by mid-2025, alongside an ambitious plan to reach 10,000 units in the coming years. DPD BRT, through its Fermopoint network, aims for up to 4,000 lockers within five years, while GLS initiated its own rollout during 2025.

This coordinated investment places Italy on a clear multi-year OOH growth trajectory, reshaping how carriers balance cost, capacity, and customer reach. The build-out is not just a convenience upgrade; it’s a structural shift in network economics - each new locker or parcel shop reduces last-mile cost per parcel and expands delivery capacity in urban areas.

Why it matters
Rising locker and parcel shop density directly influences:

  • how retailers configure delivery options in checkout,
  • how carriers manage peaks and failed deliveries, and
  • how overall OOH adoption evolves in response to cost differentials - currently €6.5 home vs €5.8 OOH on average.

As the network matures, OOH will become a central component of Italy’s last-mile infrastructure, shaping both consumer choice and carrier efficiency.

Strategic implications for market planning

Tembi’s analysis highlights three practical dimensions that matter for market strategy and portfolio alignment.

1. Segment by retailer size and category
Italy’s retailer landscape is dominated by small and medium merchants, but larger and premium-category retailers - such as fashion, beauty, and consumer electronics - set higher expectations for service speed, reliability, and returns. Delivery providers should align SLAs, OOH coverage, and returns management to match those standards while maintaining efficient access to the long tail.

2. Model the price–mix effect
With home delivery averaging €6.5 and OOH €5.8, even a modest shift in checkout mix can materially improve cost-to-serve for both carriers and retailers. Tracking these dynamics by category and region helps identify where OOH incentives or dynamic checkout sequencing can achieve measurable margin impact.

3. Track portfolio momentum
Provider client portfolios differ in growth exposure. InPost and DHL are more concentrated among high-growth retailers, while GLS, Poste Italiane, and DPD BRT anchor the market’s stable core. Monitoring these shifts over time helps providers balance predictable SMB volume with faster-growing digital retailers, ensuring coverage across both maturity extremes.

Conclusion

Italy’s last-mile market is broad, price-competitive, and evolving. Method economics continue to favour OOH expansion as networks densify; provider portfolios show divergent exposures across retailer size and growth; and the locker build-out marks a long-term structural transformation rather than a short-term initiative.

This Italian last-mile delivery market analysis outlines the market map and comparative signals needed to inform planning, benchmarking, and partnership strategies across the sector.

Download the full Italian market report or schedule a Tembi demo to see your competitive view updated continuously.


Delivery pricing trends ahead of Q4 2025

Delivery fees across the Nordics have followed clear seasonal patterns and strategic adjustments over the past two years. Drawing on data from over100,000 webshops in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway between Q1 2024 and Q32025, we track how average consumer delivery prices (in EUR) have shifted.

This analysis zooms in on the Q4 holiday peak, highlights country-specific behaviours, and compares delivery methods in urban areas - parcel lockers, pickup points, and home delivery. The aim is to show how webshops shape their pricing strategies and how these evolve through the year.

Seasonal pricing patterns and Q4 fluctuations

Seasonality is a defining feature of delivery pricing in the Nordics. Q4, the peak holiday quarter, typically brings stable or higher fees rather than discounts. In late 2024, Black Friday and Christmas did not lead to cheaper delivery - instead, many webshops kept prices firm or lifted them slightly.

· Sweden: average home delivery rose from €7.60 in Q3 2024 to €8.00 in Q4, the annual peak.
· Denmark: small increases, such as parcel shop delivery at €5.89 in Q4 versus €5.83 inQ3.
· Finland: parcel shop fees jumped by around 5% in Q4 2024.
· Norway: parcel box delivery peaked during the holiday quarter.

The pattern suggests that in high-demand Q4, retailers prioritise covering fulfilment costs over cutting fees - even when running heavy sales campaigns.

This shifts in Q1, when prices correct downward. After the holiday rush, many webshops reduced or normalised fees:

  • In Sweden, parcel box delivery fell from €5.26 in Q4 to €4.80 in Q1 2025.
  • In Denmark, the small Q4 upticks were rolled back early in 2025.
  • Norway saw a short-lived rise in home delivery(from €9.55 to €9.65 in Q1) before prices dropped sharply in Q2.

This Q1 softness reflects the post-holiday slowdown in demand and renewed competition to attract consumers during a quieter season.

All data is sourced via tembi.io

Q4 2024 stands out as a high point for delivery fees in several markets, corroborating that peak season surcharges and fewer free-shipping promos were in effect. In fact, during Black Week (Black Friday 2024), retailers across Noridcs reduced the prevalence of free shipping by 4% compared to 2023, opting instead to set spend thresholds or promote premium paid options (source: ingrid.com). In other words, fewer orders enjoyed “free delivery” in Q4 2024, as merchants nudged customers toward paid faster delivery or order bundling.This strategic move helped protect margins during the holiday boom – and consumers generally went along, paying for delivery when the value (speed, convenience) was clear (source: ingrid.com). The seasonal insight here is that peak demand doesn’t equal cheaper shipping; if anything, many webshops use the period to upsell premium delivery or maintain prices, rather than offer blanket free shipping.

Moving through 2025, the Q2 and Q3 2025 data show an interesting reset. By summer 2025, average delivery charges in many categories fell back to or below their levels from the previous holiday season. This sets the stage for how Q4 2025 might play out – which we’ll discuss in a moment.

Country-by-Country Insights

Each Nordic market shows distinct pricing dynamics, shaped by competition, consumer behaviour, and delivery costs.

Sweden

Swedish webshops consistently post the lowest delivery fees in the region.In early 2024, prices were modest - around €4.20 for locker delivery and €7.50 for home delivery. These rose steadily through the year, with parcel box and parcel shop deliveries more than 20% higher by Q3/Q4. Home delivery peaked at €8.00 in Q42024, reflecting inflationary pressures and webshop/carriers passing higher rates on to consumers.

In 2025, the trend reversed. By Q3 2025, parcel shop delivery had dropped from €6.57 in Q4 2024 to €5.37 (an 18% decline),while home delivery eased back to €7.59. This points to intensifying competition, with Swedish retailers willing to cut delivery prices quickly to gain an edge.

Denmark

Denmark’s delivery pricing remained stable through 2024, with parcel lockers and pickup points in the mid-€5 range and home delivery around €7.80–7.90. Even in Q4, increases were marginal- for example, parcel shop delivery at €5.89 in Q4 versus €5.83 in Q3.

The shift came in 2025. By Q3, parcel lockers averaged €5.00 and parcel shops €5.11 - 10–13% lower than the prior holiday season. Home delivery also dipped to €7.30 from €7.91 in Q4 2024. This gradual decline suggests Danish webshops began competing more actively on delivery price or carriers pressed the prices further down.

Finland

Finland remains the most expensive Nordic market for delivery - especially for home delivery. In 2024, Finnish shoppers paid €12–13 for home delivery, nearly double Sweden’s average. Out-of-home methods were also high at €7+. Prices climbed steadily through 2024, with parcel shops up 12% by Q4.

In 2025, home delivery crept even higher, peaking at €12.90 in Q2. But by Q3, parcel locker and shop fees had fallen sharply - down about 10% from Q2, back to early-2024 levels. Home delivery stabilised around€12.50.

Norway

Norway experienced the most pronounced swings. In 2024, home delivery peaked at €10.08 in Q2, while parcel lockers (€8.21) and parcel shops (€9.16) hit highs in Q3. Interestingly, Q4 home delivery was lower than earlier in the year at €9.55.

By 2025, Norwegian webshops had cut prices heavily, especially for out-of-home delivery. Parcel lockers fell from over €8in late 2024 to €6.64 by Q3 2025- a 20% year-on-year drop. Parcel shop delivery followed a similar pattern, down about €1.20 on average versus Q4 2024. Home delivery also eased slightly to €9.25 by Q3.

The widening price gap between home and pickup options suggests a deliberate push to shift volume to more cost-efficient methods. For carriers, Norway highlights how quickly competitive conditions can change - and the need to adjust pricing strategies in real time.

To summarize the country trends, Table 1 highlights how delivery fees in Q3 2025 compare to the last peak season (Q42024). Most markets saw notable declines in that period, especially for out-of-home deliveries:


Table 1: Average delivery price in Q4 2024 vs Q3 2025, by country and delivery method. Prices fell in most categories (especially parcel box and parcel shop deliveries) as of mid-2025, compared to the last holiday season.

Delivery Method Trends: Parcel Box vs. Parcel Shop vs. Home

Data clearly shows that out-of-home delivery is significantly cheaper for consumers in urban areas – a natural effect when carriers can deliver 5–10 times more parcels per driver compared with home delivery.

Parcel box (locker) delivery

· Cheapest option across all markets by 2025(~€5–6.5).
· Prices spiked in 2024 (e.g. Norway €6.6 → €8.3)but dropped back sharply in 2025.
· Volatility suggests retailers test price sensitivity, then reset as competition kicks in.

Parcel shop(pickup point) delivery

· Typically a few cents above lockers, but fell notably in 2025.
·  Norway: from ~€9 in 2024 to €7.2 by Q3 2025.
·  Pricing gap with home delivery widened, creating strong incentives for consumers to choose pickup.

Home delivery

· Premium service, consistently the most expensive.
· Held steady through 2024–25: ~€7.5 in SE/DK,~€9.3 in NO, ~€12.5 in FI.
· Only small price drops, with Sweden (-13% YoY)the exception.
·  Discounts remain rare and tied to high order values.

The bigger picture

Out-of-home delivery became cheaper in 2025, while home delivery kept its premium. This reflects a conscious decision: steer demand towards lockers and pickup points to cut last-mile costs and ease peak-season pressure. Black Week 2024 showed the effect in practice - locker usage rose by four percentage points and delivery times improved as shoppers embraced flexible collection (source: ingrid.com).

For logistics providers and retailers, aggressive pricing on out-of-home delivery seems to become a core lever: it nudges cost-conscious consumers, reduces operational strain, while keeping satisfaction high. But the gap has limits - home delivery still anchors convenience expectations and remains a profit lever. The real challenge is balance: keeping lockers and pickups highly attractive without eroding the value or accessibility of home delivery.

Collaboration between retailers and logistics providers is key here, ensuring service levels meet expectations as more customers choose out-of-home - seen clearly during Black Week, when lockers not only gained share but also delivered faster on average (source: ingrid.com).

Outlook forQ4 2025: What to Expect in the Peak Season

To keep the forecast transparent, we applied a simple model: for each country × delivery method, we took the Q4-over-Q3 seasonal change from 2024 and applied that ratio to Q3 2025 levels. Where 2025 trended lower than 2024, we also include a conservative midpoint between Q3 2025 and that baseline.

Regional forecast (Q4 2025)

· Parcel box(lockers): €5.6–6.0
· Parcel shop(pickup): €6.1–6.3
· Home delivery: €9.0–9.2

Seasonal lift from Q3 to Q4 looks modest. Home delivery remains the premium option, while lockers and parcel shops stay clearly cheaper.

By market

· Sweden: home ~€8.0 (flat vs last year); parcel shop ~€5.3 and lockers ~€5.0 (well below last year).
· Denmark: home ~€7.4; parcel shop ~€5.2; lockers ~€5.1 (all lower than last year).
· Finland: home ~€12.5 (still high); parcel shop ~€7.3; lockers ~€6.4 (both down year-on-year).
· Norway: home ~€9.25 (slightly below last year); parcel shop ~€7.1; lockers ~€6.7 (~20%down year-on-year).

Summary outlook for Q4 2025

Nordic delivery prices have eased through 2025 after peaking in late 2024, especially for out-of-home options (parcel box and parcel shop). Applying last year’s Q4-over-Q3 seasonality to current Q3 levels points to only small Q4 uplifts: lockers and pickups remain the low-cost choices, while home delivery stays premium and broadly flat.

Country patterns matter. Sweden and Denmark have lower 2025 bases and limited room for Q4 increases. Finland remains structurally high - especially on home delivery - so stability is more likely than hikes. Norway has corrected sharply this year, with retailers continuing to nudge volume toward cheaper lockers and pickups.

The underlying pricing strategies are clear:

· Continued shift to out-of-home delivery. Lower pricing here is deliberate - directing volume away from costly home delivery and easing last-mile strain.
· Home delivery as a premium anchor. Price cuts are modest; competition is about service quality (slots, ETAs, first-attempt success) rather than cents.
· Seasonal resets. After Christmas, prices ease in Q1—a cycle webshops use to stay competitive in slower months.

Finally, weigh this outlook against external factors that can quickly shift the picture: capacity constraints and consumer sentiment. If sentiment weakens, retailers may lean harder on thresholds and targeted incentives.

Predict growth and size with real market data

For most companies, two questions matter when looking at the e-commerce market: which webshops will grow and how large they are today. These are not easy to answer. Financial accounts are published once a year and often with long delays. Website traffic tools vary in accuracy. Sales input can be useful, but it is not consistent across markets.

Tembi approaches the problem differently. We track over 800.000 webshops in 22 European markets, visiting them every two weeks, and we convert that activity into a clear view of current size and likely growth.

What the outputs are

From this data, we produce two measures.

  • The size score (size estimation) shows how large a webshop is relative to others in the same market. It runs on a 0–100 scale and is built from multiple operating signals, not just a single proxy like traffic or revenue.
  • The growth outlook (Growht prediction) indicates whether a webshop is likely to expand, remain stable, or decline in the months ahead. We classify this into five levels: Negative, Flat, Low, High and Very High.

Together, these outputs give a comparable and timely view of the market that has not been available before.

The data behind the model

What makes this possible is the breadth of signals we collect. Every webshop is assessed on seven main areas:

  1. Export markets – selling into multiple countries is strongly linked to scale and resilience.
  2. Delivery setup – the number and type of carriers and methods say a lot about maturity.
  3. Technical add-ons – tools for reviews, marketing, or experimentation signal investment.
  4. Infrastructure – the platform and payment systems in use, from lightweight to enterprise.
  5. Financials and employees – a valuable anchor when available, though not the only input.
  6. Traffic – used carefully as a directional trend.
  7. Products – the number of SKUs, their development over time, and their categories.

It is the combination of these factors, updated every two weeks, that produces a reliable picture of both size and growth.

Why this matters

Older approaches depend on delayed filings, unstable traffic estimates, or anecdotal sales input. They describe the past, not the present. By contrast, Tembi provides a structured, repeatable model that updates with the market itself. A Danish fashion webshop and a Spanish electronics retailer can be measured on the same scale, and shifts in momentum can be detected months before they appear in official reports.

See positive and negative signals to better understand the Growth predictions indication.

What this enables

  • Sales teams can prioritise accounts that are growing.
  • Category managers can see which product areas are moving up or down.
  • Carriers and enablers can track portfolio risk and adjust before market shifts affect revenue.
  • Corporate development can identify acquisition targets with proven momentum early.

This is not prediction for prediction’s sake. It is about replacing guesswork with evidence that is current, structured and comparable.

Tembi provides a way to see the market as it develops — which webshops are growing, how large they are, and where categories are shifting. It offers the clarity needed to make decisions with confidence, based on how the market is moving today.

See it in action

Growth predictions and Size estimation are available on all markets Tembi has been active on for more then three months.

Introducing Tembi's Size indication: Understand webshop market size easily

Knowing which webshops to focus on helps your business succeed. That’s why we've launched Tembi’s Size indication, a simple way to quickly understand how active and big (or small) any webshop is in the market compared to the largest online retailers.

What is the Size indication?

Tembi’s Size indications scores webshops from 1 to 100 points, dividing them into clear groups:

  • Small: 0-24 points
  • Medium: 25-49 points
  • Large: 50-74 points
  • Very Large: 75-100 points

This makes it easy to compare webshops and see where they stand compared to others.

How does it work?

The Size indication uses hundreds of data points per webshop to decide each webshop’s score, including:

  • Size and variety of product offerings
  • Investment in technology and infrastructure
  • Amount of website traffic
  • Types of delivery methods provided

These factors, and many more, provide a clear picture of how active and large a webshop is. Each webshop’s score is clearly explained, showing both positive and negative factors.  

Why the Size indication is useful

The Size indication makes market analysis simpler. You can quickly assess market size and find webshops that fit your ICP. When looking at thousands of prospects, Size indication allows you to sort all webshops, and see their size in relation to each other.

Combine Size indication with Growth Predictions

Tembi’s Size indication works hand-in-hand with our Growth Predictions feature. By combining these insights, you get a complete view of the market opportunity - clearly identifying which webshops are not only large and active but also likely to grow. This powerful combination helps you pinpoint the best opportunities for strategic action and growth.

Want to get started?

Log in to Tembi and check out the Size indication now. All Tembi clients have access to our Growth predictions and Size indication for free during July.

Predict who will grow: Tembi launches webshop growth predictions

In business, knowledge is power, but foresight is transformational. Until now, most market intelligence relies on delivered reactive insights, offering clarity on the past or present but limited visibility into the future. Today, Tembi changes that by launching a groundbreaking predictive feature for e-commerce: Growth Predictions.

Why predictions matter

Understanding past performance is essential, but knowing what's coming next is where you truly gain a competitive advantage. With Growth Predictions, Tembi analyses hundreds of critical factors across hundreds of thousands of webshops, giving you a clear view of each retailer’s potential growth over the next 3 to 6 months.

How does it work?

Our unique predictive model evaluates comprehensive data points, including:

  • Financial trends
  • Employee growth and changes
  • Product portfolio developments
  • Web traffic insights (powered by SimilarWeb)
  • Technological investments
  • Infrastructure reliability
  • Delivery partnerships and methods
  • Category-specific trends

At the heart of this model is our proprietary AI-powered data collection methodology. For several years, we've meticulously collected, structured, and continuously updated vast datasets. Our advanced machine-learning algorithms use this rich historical data to identify patterns, learn from past behaviours, and generate precise, data-backed predictions. This ensures that our Growth Predictions aren’t guesses - they're calculated insights driven by robust AI techniques.

We translate these complex signals into straightforward, actionable insights, predicting whether a webshop will experience high growth, stability, or potential decline.

Transparent insights for smarter decisions

Growth Predictions don't just give you a simple score. They explain precisely why we anticipate certain growth patterns. For example:

  • Positive growth signals: Stable infrastructure, Product portfolio expansion, added delivery methods or partners.
  • Negative growth signals: Limited product portfolio expansion, insufficient technological investments.

This transparency helps you quickly understand the underlying strengths or vulnerabilities of any webshop.

Transform your commercial strategies

If you’re responsible for partnerships, sales, or logistics, Growth Predictions become your secret weapon. Prioritise your efforts, target the right segments and customers, optimise your resources, and proactively manage your commercial relationships by focusing on webshops that have a higher likeability to succeed.  

First of its kind

No other e-commerce intelligence tool provides predictive growth insights at this depth. Using our unique dataset of retailers and product portfolios, we provide a comprehensive mapping of the e-commerce industry, helping companies plan strategically.

We update our dataset bi-weekly, ensuring teams can track prospects, provide insights and get a competitive advantage.  

Interested in knowing more, book a demo with one of our experts.

Growth predictions are available for free as an early release during July for all our clients.

Retail reinvented: Winning in the age of AI and e-commerce

The retail industry is in the midst of profound transformation driven by two interconnected forces: the convergence of retail and e-commerce into a hybrid landscape, and the rapid integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI). These forces aren't just altering shopping habits - they're reshaping the entire retail value chain from manufacturing to fulfilment. McKinsey identifies these as key economic game-changers (putting aside broader geopolitical factors).

Two forces reshaping retail

1. The blended future of e-commerce and retail

E-commerce has evolved beyond a simple digital channel into three overlapping segments:

Manufacturers going Direct-to-Consumer (DTC): Brands like Nike, Zara, and Dyson build direct customer relationships through digital storefronts and direct shipments.

Pure-Play digital platforms: Born-digital platforms like Zalando and ASOS innovate with personalisation and logistics, with some even branching into physical flagship stores.

Traditional retailers adopting digital: Giants like IKEA and Walmart are integrating physical and digital experiences seamlessly.

These segments are merging into a highly competitive ecosystem where agility and market intelligence are essential. This blending doesn't simplify competition - it intensifies it, demanding constant vigilance and adaptability.

2. AI-driven retail intelligence

AI has moved from futuristic concept to operational necessity. Retailers leverage AI for personalised recommendations, dynamic pricing, predictive inventory management, and customer service automation, enabling smarter, faster, and more profitable operations.

Additionally, the expansion of cloud computing and the explosion of available data provide new opportunities to understand market dynamics in real-time. Historically, analysing every shelf in Europe was unthinkable; today, online data combined with AI makes large-scale, real-time market analysis entirely feasible.

A strategic framework for AI-enabled retail

Staying ahead requires a structured approach. Recently, Shish Shridhar from our partner Microsoft shared a strategic framework leveraging real-time data, AI, and automation, highlighting essential levers to drive growth.

Customer-facing levers

Place – Sales channels: physical, digital, hybrid
Product – Assortment depth, availability
Value – Pricing strategy, perceived customer value
People – Customer service, store experience
Communication – Marketing, promotions, loyalty programmes

Operational levers ("The Triangle")

Systems – Technology infrastructure, analytics, automation
Logistics – Efficient supply chain, fulfilment methods, delivery
Suppliers – Vendor management, sourcing and COGS

How market intelligence creates a competitive advantage

At Tembi, we equip retailers and brands with large-scale market analytics derived from real-time data. We continuously track over 600,000 online retailers and 300 million products across Europe - among the largest datasets in the industry. By connecting this data with location specifics, company details, and AI-powered analytics, commercial teams gain clarity and confidence in decision-making, eliminating guesswork when it comes to understanding what drives growth.

As I see it, by unifying data across digital and physical touch points, market intelligence at scale enables smarter decisions in Product, Value, and Systems - helping businesses thrive in a hybrid, AI-first retail world.

Place

• Based on the product categories that you excel in - which markets are then optimal, and in which geographies would it be optimal to promote and sell your products.
• If you have or plan to set up physical stores how are they threatened and compared to online retailers, and how is the specific area you think about investing in evolving. This will show whether you can expect optimal levels for sales per store and store traffic.

Product

• Predict which product categories and brands to invest in, when you decide where to play - which product segments are you in with which brand and pricing strategies to drive market share and inventory turnover and hence sales growth.
• Understand the competition in the product categories and brands you are in and the strengths and strategies of the other players in the market.
Improve out-of stock-rate by finding out when products are sold over the year and if that differs in different geographies, and thereby make sure that availability is secured.

Value

• Understand the current (or seasonality-defined) pricing in the market to increase gross margin, right-in-time markdowns, and possibility for price skimming but get an actual X-ray about the real price development in the market.

Logistics

• When being present in the market, or especially entering a new one, you need to know how to make it successful. One of the important things to understand delivery market standards in different markets, e.g. OOH, home delivery, free shipping thresholds, delivery time etc. Some D2C try to negotiate a pan-European delivery contract without factoring ion the different market dynamics, or simply enter with the wrong expectations. This quickly becomes very expensive - e.g. if the customers are used to home deliveries and you go in the market wth parcel boxes, you would need to wait for that to be changed. Hence, very important to understand if you model fits to assure fulfilment accuracy.

Intelligence as the new retail imperative

Success in modern retail isn’t about choosing between physical and digital - it’s about blending them intelligently. In the era defined by AI and hybrid commerce, tools like Tembi provide retailers the crucial insights required to navigate complexity.

Whether you’re a DTC manufacturer, a digital-first retailer expanding your reach, or a traditional retailer enhancing your omnichannel strategy, winning demands strategic clarity grounded in data and real-time market intelligence.

Use-case: Time outreach for new partnerships using checkout signals

How a Last-Mile delivery commercial team used Tembi to reach online retailers when they were most likely to engage.


The context

A last mile delivery provider was looking to improve how and when they approached new merchant prospects. While they had a solid understanding of who they wanted to work with, outreach often happened too early (before the merchant was ready to switch) or too late (after a competitor had locked in a contract).

Without visibility into what was changing in the merchant’s checkout, reps had to rely on cold outreach, hoping to catch a merchant at the right moment. They needed a way to:

  • Identify merchants that were actively reviewing or switching delivery providers
  • Spot meaningful signals, like new product categories or delivery method updates
  • Align outreach timing with actual changes in the merchant’s delivery setup

What they did with Tembi

Using Tembi Checkout Intelligence, the team started monitoring live changes in merchant checkout configurations. Tembi scrapers simulate checkout flows on thousands of webshops and detect:

  • When a merchant adds or removes a delivery provider
  • When delivery pricing or speed options are updated
  • When a new product category is added (suggesting operational changes)
  • When delivery method names or descriptions shift (e.g. switching from “standard” to “express”)

The team set up biweekly alerts on merchants that matched their ICP and showed recent changes in their delivery stack. This created a dynamic feed of prospects likely to be re-evaluating logistics partners, so an ideal timing for outreach.

The result

The team didn’t need to chase every webshop in a market. Instead, they focused on high-potential accounts showing signs of change. Over a six-week period, they:

  • Reached out to 37 merchants flagged by stack change alerts
  • Booked 22 first meetings, with 18 confirming they were actively reviewing delivery providers
  • Landed 8 new partnerships directly tied to alerts showing recent removals of a competing provider

Timing their approach based on real signals helped them avoid wasted effort and start conversations when interest was highest.


Why it worked

Actionable timing signals was more effective than cold outreach
Changes tracked automatically from actual checkout flows
Focus on merchants in motion who are more likely to convert
Fewer dead ends - reps only acted when there was a reason to reach out

Use-case: How a delivery provider’s local team used Tembi data to win more clients

A last mile delivery provider operating across several European countries needed to give its regional sales & partnerships team a clearer picture of how competing providers were positioned locally. Without reliable data, the team depended on anecdotal feedback from merchants or patchy CRM notes about which providers were in use. This made it difficult to:

• Prepare for calls with accurate competitor insight
• Spot new merchant opportunities based on delivery gaps
• Build region-specific messaging around speed, tracking, or price

They weren’t seeking a broad market expansion strategy, just precise, local visibility to sharpen commercial conversations.

What was done with Tembi

Using Tembi Checkout Intelligence, the team pulled data on hundreds of webshops in their target region. Tembi’s technology visits every retailer with an active webshop and creates visibility into checkout flows and extracts structured data on:

• Which delivery providers are actually offered
• Delivery speeds and  prices
• Labels and methods (e.g. express, standard, tracked) in use
• Recent changes - such as a provider being added or removed
• Images of how delivery options were presented

The data, updated every two weeks, enabled quick filtering by platform (e.g. Shopify, WooCommerce), product category, and country/area. Local sales teams gained a trusted, up-to-date view of the real delivery landscape.

The result

With provider usage clearly mapped for their target region, the team could:

• Enter sales calls with confidence, knowing which competitor was in place
• Spot merchants lacking tracked or fast delivery options
• Tailor outreach to emphasise service gaps (e.g. slow delivery, high fees)
• Build target lists of merchants using weaker providers for displacement opportunities

No major strategic shift - just sharper conversations, better timing, and stronger commercial positioning at the local level. With a 20% increase in conversion.

Why it worked

• Data based on real checkout flows - not assumptions or outdated lists
• Biweekly updates kept teams working with fresh information
• Easy filtering by region and platform enabled targeted, local action
• Directly supported pre-call research, personalised outreach, and competitive mapping

Interested in exploring how Checkout Data and Webshop Monitoring can help you grow your sales? Book a call with one of our Last-mile data experts. Book a demo

Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
Product
Last-Mile Delivery and Market Intelligence

n the fast-paced last-mile delivery sector, market intelligence is essential for success. By understanding your customers, competitors, and market trends, you can make informed decisions that lead to growth and profitability.

Market intelligence can help you identify new market opportunities, improve operational efficiency, and develop new products and services. It can also help you stay ahead of the competition and differentiate yourself from the crowd.

In this blog post, we have outlined a few specific examples of how last-mile delivery companies are using market intelligence to grow their businesses.

Staying ahead of the competition
Market intelligence can help last-mile delivery companies understand the competitive landscape and identify new ways to differentiate themselves. For example, a company might use market intelligence to identify new technologies that can help them improve their delivery services, or to develop new pricing strategies that are more competitive.

Identifying new market opportunities
By tracking market trends and customer behaviour, last-mile delivery companies can identify new markets to expand into or how green delivery is developing. For example, a company might identify a growing demand for same-day delivery in a particular city or region, or an understanding of the competitor's solution and market penetration of different delivery solutions.  

Understanding website traffic patterns and consumer purchase behaviour
Last-mile delivery companies can today track which product categories are growing and which webshop’s are growing in popularity, as well as which international sites are exporting to one’s country. By doing so, last-mile delivery companies can establish early partnerships abroad and better equip themselves for future demands and growth.

Developing new products and services
Market intelligence can help last-mile delivery companies understand the needs of their customers and develop new products and services that meet those needs. For example, a company might develop a new service that delivers packages to customers' workplaces, or a possibility to get delivery at very specific times in the evening.

Improving operational efficiency
Market intelligence can help last-mile delivery companies optimise their delivery routes, reduce costs, and improve delivery times. For example, a company might use market intelligence to identify the best locations for new warehouses, or to develop more efficient delivery schedules.

Getting good data for Market Intelligence is not easy, as it requires a lot of time, and quite often a big investment in data infrastructure and a plan to keep high quality and ensure data is actualized. Hence, many decisions are taken without bringing external factors into the mix or using poor data as a ground.

Different Market Intelligence platforms collect different types of data and can help companies better understand the market dynamics. Here are a few tips and suppliers for getting started with market intelligence.

Getting started with Market Intelligence

As with any strategic decision, starting the process, you need to define your goals. Market intelligence is not an answer, it is a tool. Are you looking for growth within a particular type of webshops, or price development of different delivery methods? Or a more complex question around identify new market opportunities. Once you know your goals, you can start to identify the data and insights you need.

Collect data
There are many different sources of market intelligence data, including customer surveys, industry reports, and government statistics. You can also collect data from your own internal systems, such as sales data and customer feedback.

Analyse the data
Once you have collected data, you need to analyse it to identify trends and insights. You can use a variety of tools and techniques to analyze data, such as data analytics software or more advanced methods using machine learning.

Share the insights
Once you have gained insights from your market intelligence data, you should to share them with your team to gather input, feedback, and get new ideas so you can keep iterating your work. You can either do a presentation or set up a dashboard that monitors the data and actualises your insights.

Tembi and Market Intelligence for Last-Mile Delivery

Our E-commerce Intelligence Platform – EIP – monitors every webshop on the market, and provides data around providers, prices, and delivery methods. This data can be filtered from a webshop category perspective or for example revenue, providing a comprehensive overview and intelligence of the market and competitors. Hence, EIP both collects and analyses the data, and provides (shares) the insights in simple overview. In other words, decision-ready intelligence.

Product
E-commerce Intelligence Platform

ith the E-commerce Intelligence Platform (EIP), we have set out on one of our most ambitious data and analytics ventures yet: to authenticate and catalog every webshop globally, defining product categories, individual products, and the delivery infrastructure. Our aim is to build the most expansive and current e-commerce database, one that can proactively empower webshops, carriers & delivery providers, and suppliers to navigate through the dynamic, ever-expanding market.

EIP was first introduced in Denmark in 2021 and has since extended its reach to Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. To date, we systematically and repeatedly index, validate and analyze over 200,000 webshops, classifying them into different product categories.

So, why embark on this colossal task?

The objective behind EIP is to provide the industry with unparalleled Market Intelligence. To achieve this, it was imperative for us to go beyond the surface-level offerings and gain a deep understanding of the last-mile delivery mechanics, the various providers involved, and the pricing structures.

Benefits of EIP

All webshops in one place
EIP offers a comprehensive market overview, identifying and validating every operational webshop, while discarding inactive ones. We have established a direct link between each webshop and its owner, detailing ownership, headquarters, and financial figures. By evaluating the webshops' offerings and categorizing their products, we understand the technological platforms utilized and the delivery services provided, including pricing and export capabilities.

Our "Market Scrape" equips users with a detailed snapshot of all webshops in a specific market. For deeper insights, particularly into the largest, custom-built webshops, our "Custom Scrape" service offers an in-depth analysis.

Checkout monitoring
Understanding the last-mile market, we monitor each delivery checkout on all webshops, gathering information about providers and their position on the list of delivery options, delivery methods and prices, free-delivery threshold, and green delivery options – giving us comprehensive view of the shipping market and how it evolves from a public perspective.

We keep a pulse on the last-mile delivery market by continuously monitoring checkout processes across webshops. This monitoring captures data on delivery providers, their ranking in delivery options, pricing strategies, thresholds for free delivery, and eco-friendly shipping options, thereby offering an overview of the evolving shipping landscape.

 

Decision-ready Market Intelligence
Merging our data with metrics like order volumes allows last-mile delivery providers to proactively respond to changes in their checkout positioning, preventing potential revenue drops.

“Prior to Tembi, identifying a lost position at a store’s checkout could take up to six weeks, during which we would lose about 64% of order volumes. With EIP's immediate updates, we can swiftly address the issue, preventing significant revenue losses”

Webshop integration manager

Let us say you charge €3,0 per delivered package and expect 100 packages per day (on average). The daily revenue is €300. Losing 64% of the volume equals to a loss of €192 per day. During six weeks that loss amounts to €8.064.  

With EIP, as soon as a positioned is lost, you are notified, and can talk to the store, and manage your delivery operations immediately.  

From a strategic perspective, both as a webshop owner, as well as delivery provider, you can track which delivery methods are popular, what are the market prices, and where is the market developing, both on your own market, but also abroad.  

Automated lead generation
Understanding the supplier network of providers for webshops within different fields - delivery, payments, and technology - opens an overview of who works with whom. Giving providers competitive intelligence and a perfect data set for lead generation and prospecting.  

As a delivery provider, being able to see all your clients in one simple overview with metadata, you will equally see where you are not present. By understanding previous relationships and solutions used, you can improve your sales pitch and competitive edge.

EIP use-cases

There are multiple ways to use EIP and the data. Here are a couple of examples.

EIP for Account Managers
See what technologies your clients are using, and which providers they work with. If you work with last-mile delivery, you can see your position in each check-out and follow your client's business and get the latest data before your check-up.

EIP for prospecting
Whether you work with professional services for webshops or selling software, you can find each webshop on your market and find precisely the type of webshop you are looking for with our filters.

EIP for Business Development
See and follow market trends, track your competitors and always be up to date.  

EIP for Customer Success
From the moment you have a new client, follow the implementation and results. Track critical changes and get access to detailed customer business information.

EIP for Analysts and Business Intelligence
Via our API you can extract all our data to your own system and combine external data with your internal data to track correlations, get a full competitor, and market overview.

“A dynamic market requires ongoing data collection.”

Christian Mejlvang, head of product at Tembi

The technology behind EIP

Our data foundation is robust, encompassing over five billion data points, which include both real-time and historical data collected from 2021. We augment this repository daily with over one million data points to guarantee not only the high quality of our data but its relevance as well.

Utilizing diverse machine learning techniques such as AI (Artificial Intelligence), NLP (Natural Language Processing), LLM, and image recognition, we convert raw data into actionable intelligence, aligning with our commitment to transforming data into insight. This data undergoes a process of enrichment, contextualization, and multi-level automated verification to ensure its integrity. We categorize our data into three tiers of quality—Bronze, Silver, and Gold—and it is only the Gold-standard data that is displayed on the EIP platform, reflecting our dedication to the highest standards of excellence.

Our data acquisition strategy is multifaceted: 1) sourcing open data, 2) procuring datasets from various providers, 3) deploying our proprietary scrapers to gather exclusive data, and 4) generating novel data through analytical methods applied to the data we have. This fourth approach underpins our Predictive Market Intelligence service.

We employ a combination of econometric and predictive machine learning models to create proprietary datasets. These are instrumental in our analysis of market trends and trajectories, providing an innovative perspective on market dynamics.

Interested in knowing more about EIP? Contact us.

Market Intelligence
A Guide to 10 Key Types of Business Intelligence

here are many “intelligences” in the world of business. Besides the cognitive ability of a business’s staff, it refers to the information that has been gathered, analysed, and presented in a way that is useful for decision-making. It is not just raw data; intelligence is actionable information that provides insight into a particular subject, such as a competitor’s activities or internal business capabilities. "Intelligence" is a multifaceted term that usually denotes a high level of understanding, awareness, or information processing, whether by humans, collectives (like organizations), or technology.

What type of intelligence is needed often depends on what strategic decision you are looking to make, what type of resources you have, and the amount of data. Here are the ten most common ones:

Business Intelligence is a technology-driven process for analysing data, presenting actionable information to help executives, managers, and other corporate end users make informed business decisions. BI encompasses a variety of tools, applications, and methodologies that enable organizations to collect data from internal systems and external sources, prepare it for analysis, develop and run queries against the data, and create reports, dashboards, and data visualizations. This process offers comprehensive business metrics, often in real-time, to support better decision-making. With BI, businesses can focus on data-driven strategies to address weaknesses and capitalize on strengths.

Market Intelligence is the gathering of relevant data about the entirety of a company's market space. It covers broad spectrums such as understanding industry trends, identifying market opportunities, and detailed insights into competitors and customers. This intelligence is crucial for forming market entry strategies, pricing models, business development and sales & marketing initiatives. It aids businesses in anticipating market shifts and consumer needs, enabling proactive rather than reactive strategies. The insight gained from market intelligence informs various strategic decisions, such as market opportunity assessment, market penetration strategy, and market development.

Marketing Intelligence is the practice of collecting data from a variety of sources about the market environment a business operates in. It includes the analysis of consumer behaviour patterns, campaign outreach, and purchase triggers. The focus is to understand the success of marketing efforts and to gauge the sentiment and preferences of current and potential customers. It influences tactical marketing decisions and helps businesses adapt their strategies to better meet consumer expectations, enhance brand loyalty, and optimize return on marketing investment.

Competitive Intelligence refers to the systematic collection and analysis of information about competitors and the competitive environment. CI aims to provide a complete picture of the marketplace and the forces at work within it, encompassing aspects such as competitors' strategies, market developments, new entrants, and technological advancements. Effective CI provides a legal and ethical means to anticipate competitive moves and stay ahead of industry trends, supporting strategic planning and risk management.

Customer Intelligence (CI) is a sophisticated analysis of customer data designed to create comprehensive portraits of ideal customers to better understand and predict their behaviour. It is an advanced step beyond basic customer service, seeking not just to address customer needs but to anticipate them. CI combines demographic and psychographic data with transactional and behavioural insights to paint a detailed picture of current and potential customers. This intelligence helps in personalizing marketing strategies, enhancing customer experiences, and boosting customer loyalty. In the age of big data, companies leverage machine learning and AI (Artificial Intelligence) algorithms to process vast amounts of information, providing a deep dive into customer preferences, pain points, and potential opportunities for cross-selling and up-selling.  

Financial Intelligence combines understanding a company's financial health with the savvy to use this data in making robust decisions. It involves the analysis of financial data like cash flow statements, balance sheets, and income statements to grasp a company's financial condition and forecast its future performance. It is not just about number crunching; it also includes reading between the lines of financial statements to identify the underlying performance factors, assessing the company's fiscal policies, and ensuring regulatory compliance. Financial Intelligence helps in capital budgeting, financial planning, and aligning financial goals with corporate strategy.

Operational Intelligence (OI) is the real-time dynamic, business analytics that delivers visibility and insight into data, streaming events, and business operations. OI solutions run query analysis on live feeds and event data to deliver real-time operational insights. It involves understanding and optimizing labour productivity, machinery performance, and other operational sectors. By integrating and analysing data from various operations, businesses can quickly identify and address inefficiencies, ensuring the smooth functioning of processes and supporting continuous improvement.

Sales Intelligence refers to technologies, applications, and practices for the collection, integration, analysis, and presentation of information to help salespeople keep up to date with clients, prospect data, and drive business. It includes a range of activities, such as tracking customer data and interactions, social media monitoring, and sales forecasts. With accurate and insightful sales intelligence, sales teams can enhance their productivity, improve lead generation and conversion rates, and drive increased sales and profitability.

Product Intelligence involves collecting and analysing data concerning one's products and those of competitors. It is pivotal in understanding how a product performs across its lifecycle, which features resonate with customers, and what improvements should be prioritized. This intelligence is crucial for product development, management, and innovation, informing companies about user feedback, product usage patterns, and market demands. By leveraging product intelligence, businesses can tailor their product offerings to better meet customer needs and stay competitive in the market.

Technological Intelligence is the systematic gathering and analysis of information about the technological environment of a business to aid decision-making. It includes tracking trends in technology advancements, research and development within the industry, patent filings, and regulatory changes. With a solid technological intelligence strategy, a company can foresee technological disruptions, identify new business opportunities, innovate, and maintain a competitive edge. This intelligence is vital for strategic planning, particularly in industries where technology evolves rapidly and is a key differentiator.

Many types of intelligences are not exhaustive and often overlap. Businesses typically leverage a combination of these intelligence types to inform various functional and strategic areas within their organizations.  

 

Technology
Connect the world’s information to better understand future

aking a decision is easy but knowing how to make the right decision at the moment of choice, now that is tricky. As the outcomes and consequences are only known after the decision has been made, we try hard to mitigate the risk of making a wrong one.  

Like a game of probability, we weigh different information and data, and play out the possible outcomes against each other to narrow down our choices, and, well, make a bet. Given the vast amount of information and data available, gathering the needed and relevant information can be a challenge. For the human mind it is impossible to grasp all inputs and data at once. And it is practically impossible. Additionally, as we learn new information, we may create new connections and gain new insights that open new possibilities. Which often leads to the question, "What if...?"

Lastly, before executing the decision, we weigh our options and evidence, and filter it through the personal and/or corporate value filter. By repeating this process, and adding a decision-review step, we learn how to make better decisions. The more we know, the more experience we have, the better our chances of making the best possible choice. And that is how it has been for the last ten of thousands of years.  

While we have evolved our ability to gather and access information with software, and made the analytical part simpler and more accessible, machine-assisted decision making and execution is about to change the decision-making process.

AI and decision making

The human brain can process 11 million bits of information per second, but our conscious minds can handle only 40 to 50 bits per second. And while we do not always forget, retrieving the right information at the right time is not straightforward.

Our ability to gather and analyse data is limited by our knowledge, time, and “computational power.” However, if we know what information we need, there are now thousands of tools that can help us gather the data and connect it with other data sources to uncover new insights and patterns.

Predicting the future based on historical patterns is not a complicated science, but rarely a trustworthy one. Machine learning algorithms have increased the accuracy and given us a better foresight of how decisions and events might unfold, making it possible to simulate different scenarios and study decision consequences without having to execute a decision. The possibility of setting up “What-if” scenarios and playing them against each other, pushes us closer of being able to make the right, rational decision.  

Building on the previous point about the importance of good data, let us talk about the challenge of data diversity. Machine learning models are only as good as the data they are trained on. If you train a model on a narrow dataset, it will only be able to make predictions that are relevant to that dataset. For example, an automated script writer that is only trained on movies and books written by Quentin Tarantino will always produce scripts that are similar to Tarantino's work. The same thing happens if you run your analytics only based on your company's internal data without considering external data such as market and competitor data.  

Powerful and accurate models combine data from a variety of sources to reduce bias, improve generalisation, and identify new patterns and insights. For example, a company that is developing a model to predict customer churn could combine data from its internal CRM system with data from external sources such as social media and customer reviews. This would help the company to identify patterns and insights that it would not be able to see by looking at its internal data alone.

Prescriptive analytics  

The one type of analytics that will profoundly change our decision-making process, and profoundly change how we work, is prescriptive analytics.

Prescriptive analytics is (currently) the final stage in the analytics spectrum, which includes descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive analytics. Descriptive analytics answers the question "What happened?", diagnostic analytics explain “Why it happened!”, predictive analytics addresses "What might happen?", and prescriptive analytics tackles "What should we do about it?", including all former analytics in its process.  

When we make decisions, all these analyses happen naturally in our brain and are part of our decision process. The extent of how much we analyse depends on the time we have, the number of people involved, and the consequences of the decision. If we have little time or the stakes are low, we may make a quick decision with minimal analysis. However, if we have more time or the stakes are high, we will spend more time trying to analyse the situation and considering our (imagined) options.

If we turn to machine-assisted decision making powered by prescriptive analytics many of parts of decision process become automated. Using machine learning, algorithms, and computational modelling, prescriptive analytics provide insights, simulates different scenarios, and suggest actionable steps in response to a predicted outcome or scenario.

For example, in supply chain management, prescriptive analytics might suggest optimal routes for delivery based on predicted weather conditions, anticipated traffic patterns, and historical accident data. Or, in finance, it could recommend investment strategies based on a forecasted economic downturn.

A New Paradigm of Decision-Making with Prescriptive Intelligence

A step-by-step decision-making process includes most commonly these seven parts:

  1. Identify the decision
  2. Gather information
  3. Identify alternatives
  4. Weigh the evidence
  5. Choose among the alternatives
  6. Take action
  7. Review the decision

Imagine that you have a data foundation that gathers all your data in one place, both external open data (market, competitors etc.) and internal. You have billions of rows of present and historical data, cleaned, enriched, and contextualised. You are a Business Development Manager at a Last-Mile delivery company, and you are tasked with expanding sales to a new area. Where do you start?

1. Identify the decision

In which geographical area can we increase our revenue the most?  

2. Gather information

Where are our competitors present?  
What are our competitors' prices?  
Where are our terminals?  
How much are we today delivering in each area?
What delivery options are the most popular in which area?  
What investment will be needed for each area?  
Etc.  

3. Identify alternatives

All areas and options are listed. Business cases are presented.

4. Weigh the evidence

Alternatives are weighed against each other. Pros and cons are discussed.

5. Choose among the alternatives

Once you have weighed all the evidence, you are ready to select the alternative that seems best for the company. You may even choose a combination of alternatives.

6. Take action

You implement the chosen alternative. It is time for execution.

7. Review the decision

You review the results of the decision and see how your expansion plan is working out and iterate.  

With prescriptive intelligence in place, the machine assisted decision-making process is similar, but at the same quite different as the effort lies in the beginning, and not the collection of information. We assume here you have access to a tool that combines market data with internal data.

1. Identify the decision

In which geographical area can we increase our revenue the most?  

2. Goal formulation (prompting)

What are the results that you are looking to achieve and through what means. List interesting areas for exploration and factors you think are relevant.

3. Scenario evaluation

Alternatives and scenarios are simulated and presented by the AI describing the steps needed to reach formulated goal. Costs and risks are listed based on data that is available. You have the possibility to deep dive into areas to expand your analysis or follow the recommended path.

4. Weigh the scenarios

Recommendation is weighed against the other scenarios.

5. Scenario implementation

You implement the chosen scenario and measure against milestones and goals set by the AI.

6. Review the chosen scenario

The decision and chosen scenario are evaluated in real time with the AI to ensure ongoing learning and optimisation.

If we look past the fact that much of the decision-making process is automated, we move from hypothetical discussions around outcomes and consequences to an evaluation of the proposed steps to reach the decision and set goal. The proposed scenario is not unbiased and unemotional, it is guiding force explaining how to reach that goal with what is available.  

Science fiction?  

Prescriptive intelligence is not something we imagine anymore, it is being worked on today, and there are already solutions in the market for specific use cases. Our decision-making process will not only be faster (timewise), but we will also be able to be much more accurate in understanding outcomes and the decisions in between we need to make to reach a certain goal.

Finding the competitive edge

If everyone can afford the same tools and have access to the same data, isn't there a risk that we will all pull towards the same goals in our respective fields? Isn’t it all about increasing profit through expansion or decreasing costs?

The chances of that scenario are limited.

Not one company has the same data as another one. We can acquire datasets, predictions, but in the end how we operate, they people we employ, the decision we made, and our assets and business models are not the same. Each company has its own strategy, so even if we all access the same market intelligence, the outcome will be different. But just as generative AI has shown with ChatGPT and Midjourney, the playfield has become much more even.  

Market analysis and expensive data is becoming less expensive and available to a larger extent of companies, and not only the big ones.

Market intelligence

A general prescriptive analytics platform is still a couple of years in the future. At Tembi, we have built the data foundation for it, and are constantly working on adding new machine learning based prediction and econometric models to create better insights and foresights for our clients based on open data.

While companies have their internal data, we provide extensive access to open data, and ready-to-go-analytics – or market intelligence – that provide actionable insights to the decision-making process. Many of our clients use our API to connect their data with our data to examine and understand (i.e.) volume fluctuations (revenue drivers) with external events, and hence be able to understand how external factors impact their business, mitigate risk, or uncover new business possibilities.

The more we connect the world's Information the better we will understand the future, and the more impact our decisions will have. And that is why we work here at Tembi. Until we provide a general prescriptive intelligence platform for executing successful business decisions, we focus on providing market intelligence that is beyond what can be seen by a person online. We combine data from multiple industries and build market predictions models based on changes across different industries.  

Technology
Predictive Market Intelligence: Transforming Open Data into Intelligence

n today's data-driven world, the abundance of information and the advancement of analytical tools have sparked a competitive quest for insights. As data becomes more affordable and accessible, the ability to use this data effectively becomes a decisive factor in staying ahead. But having data is one thing; making sense of it to predict the future is quite another. It is a complex task that goes beyond just crunching numbers—it is about weaving together diverse parts of information, both old and new, to form a clear picture of what lies ahead.

This article aims to untangle the concept of Predictive Market Intelligence, demonstrating how it operates and its value in a business context. We will look at how this approach to data can lead to smarter decisions and how it is shaping the way companies move forward.  

What is Predictive Market Intelligence?

Predictive Market Intelligence (PMI) stands at the confluence where big data analytics, artificial intelligence, and advanced market research meet. It is the art and science of collecting vast amounts of open data - from (i.e.) market trends, company behaviour, to global economic indicators - and analysing them to forecast future market conditions. The aim of PMI is not only to investigate information based on past market performance – historical data – but to forecast the evolution of markets, specific industries, or companies, by employing diverse analytical methods and algorithms.

Unlike traditional market research, Predictive Market Intelligence is dynamic, constantly refining its insights with a steady stream of real-time data. This process enables businesses to not just interpret the present but also to anticipate and prepare for future market developments, gaining foresight and deepening their understanding of potential future scenarios.

Applications of Predictive Market Intelligence

If companies can use Predictive Market Intelligence to gain foresight, can PMI be applied everywhere, or are there particular interesting applications of this approach to market analysis and strategy? Here are a couple of examples:

Enhanced Forecasting Abilities
  • Anticipating Market Trends: Predictive Market Intelligence allows companies to not just understand current market dynamics but to anticipate future trends. By analysing patterns in data, businesses can foresee changes in consumer preferences, economic shifts, or industry disruptions. This foresight enables them to adapt their strategies proactively rather than reactively, staying ahead of the curve.
  • Identifying Emerging Opportunities: With Predictive Market Intelligence, companies can spot emerging opportunities in their industry. This could include untapped market segments, new product possibilities, or innovative service offerings that have not yet been fully realised by competitors.

Data-Driven Decision Making
  • Reducing Uncertainty: In business, uncertainty can be costly. Predictive Market Intelligence significantly reduces this uncertainty by providing data-backed insights. When decisions are based on solid data, the risks associated with them are significantly lowered.
  • Strategic Alignment: Predictive Market Intelligence aligns various aspects of a business - from marketing and sales to product development and supply chain management - with the overall market dynamics. This alignment ensures that every part of the business is working towards a common, data-informed goal.

Improved Customer Understanding
  • Tailored Customer Experiences: By understanding customer behaviour and preferences through Predictive Market Intelligence, companies can tailor their products, services, and marketing efforts to meet the specific needs and desires of their target audience.
  • Building Customer Loyalty: Businesses that consistently meet or exceed customer expectations foster stronger customer loyalty. Predictive Market Intelligence plays a crucial role in enabling businesses to understand and predict what their customers want, often before the customers themselves know.

Operational Efficiency
  • Streamlining Operations: Predictive Market Intelligence can identify inefficiencies in operations, supply chains, and production processes. By addressing these inefficiencies, companies can reduce costs and improve their overall operational effectiveness.
  • Resource Optimisation: With Predictive Market Intelligence, businesses can allocate their resources more effectively, whether it's human resources, capital investment, or marketing spend, ensuring that every dollar spent is optimised for maximum return.

Competitive Analysis
  • Benchmarking Against Competitors: Predictive Market Intelligence tools can analyze competitors' performance, strategies, and market position. This insight allows companies to benchmark their performance and strategise accordingly to gain a competitive advantage.
  • Adaptive Strategies: In fast-paced industries, what works today might not work tomorrow. Predictive Market Intelligence empowers companies to quickly adapt their strategies in response to competitive moves or market shifts.

Technology Behind Predictive Market Intelligence

Retrieving Market Intelligence is a question of gathering data from various sources, organising the gathered data, and applying different technologies to validate, enrich and put the data into context. The last step is to apply different analytical models depending what outcome one is looking for. So, where the first step is about gathering (open) data, the second analytical step is the creation of synthetic data (programmatically generated data).  

Each step of the process, from open data to intelligence, uses different technologies. Each plays a unique role and function, but applied together, collectively, these technologies can create incredibly precise projections. Let us dive into a couple of them.

Data Mining and Aggregation

Central to Predictive Market Intelligence is the process of data mining and aggregation. This involves the meticulous gathering of vast volumes of data from a multitude of sources like public information, financial reports, and for example websites. The objective is to amass a comprehensive dataset that encapsulates the diverse aspects of the market and company behaviors. This rich tapestry of data forms the foundation upon which further analysis is built.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) stand at the core of Predictive Market Intelligence, processing and interpreting the extensive data collected. AI algorithms are adept at discerning complex patterns and relationships within the data, which are often imperceptible to the human eye. Simultaneously, ML models, with their ability to learn and improve from the data, continuously refine their insights, ensuring they remain relevant and accurate in a rapidly changing market.

Natural Language Processing

A key component in understanding context is Natural Language Processing (NLP). NLP technologies delve into text-based data, analysing news articles, pdfs, and websites. They are particularly effective in understanding the context of the written text, and being able to synthesis substantial amounts of data and help verify what the data is

Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics brings a forward-looking perspective to Predictive Market Intelligence. By employing statistical and econometric models as well as forecasting algorithms, it anticipates future market behaviors, trends, and company needs. This facet of Predictive Market Intelligence is instrumental in risk assessment and scenario planning, allowing businesses to prepare for various future market scenarios.

Big Data Analytics and Cloud Computing

Big Data Analytics provides the muscle to process and analyze the immense datasets characteristic of Predictive Market Intelligence. It offers real-time analysis and sophisticated data visualization tools, making complex data understandable and actionable. Complementing this is cloud computing, which offers the necessary infrastructure for data storage and analysis. Its scalability ensures that businesses can adapt to varying data demands, while also offering cost-effective solutions compared to traditional in-house data centers.

For Experts and Beginners Alike

Predictive Market Intelligence is not only for experts. With platforms such as Tembi, PMI is today accessible for everyone, regardless of analytical skill set. While there are use-cases that require tailormade algorithms, predictions such as company growth, market trends and econometric forecasts are already available. And with decision-ready market insights, companies can quickly adapt to a data-driven decision process without heavy investments.

Predictive Market Intelligence for Experts

For the expert, Predictive Market Intelligence serves as an advanced tool that complements and elevates their analytical skills. PMI can be used to validate hypotheses, refine models, and conduct in-depth analyses that underpin robust, strategic decisions.

The technology used in Predictive Market Intelligence lets experts quickly sort through and understand huge amounts of data. This means they can get a clear picture of how markets are changing, what competitors are doing, and how companies are behaving. With this kind of intelligence, experienced professionals can make accurate predictions and find new business opportunities before anyone else does.

For less savvy analytical minds

For those new to Predictive Market Intelligence, it can seem both exciting and a bit overwhelming at first. But this technology simplifies the process of understanding the market by turning complicated ideas into clear insights. It provides easy-to-use tools and clear visuals that help make sense of complex data.

With Predictive Market Intelligence, even those just starting out can get a complete view of the market. They'll learn to spot the important signs that show changes in what consumers want or in the economy. This technology is like having a guide and a coach in one, helping new users think strategically and make decisions based on data.

A Convergence of Knowledge

Predictive Market Intelligence acts as a bridge between theory and practice, enabling a fluid exchange of knowledge across all levels of expertise. It is a field that values the knowledge of the expert and nurtures the growth of the newcomer. By fostering an environment where learning is continuous and insights are accessible, Predictive Market Intelligence ensures that all users, regardless of their level of expertise, can contribute to and benefit from the intelligence it provides.

What is next for Predictive Market Intelligence

The future of Predictive Market Intelligence looks particularly promising as cloud computing costs, which have been a significant factor in the past, are expected to continue their trend towards more economical and efficient services. As the price-performance ratio of technologies like GPUs improves, companies can leverage more powerful analytical capabilities at a lower cost. This could further democratize PMI, allowing smaller businesses to engage with what was only accessible to larger corporations. The integration of emerging technologies such as distributed cloud and advanced AI (Artificial Intelligence) algorithms will further enhance PMI's accuracy and speed, offering businesses of all sizes the predictive insights needed to stay ahead in an increasingly data-centric world.

What will be key, as always with the development of analytics and AI, is the quality and the amount of data. With a democratization of technology, the winners will be the ones that invest in good data gathering processes – both internal and external open data – and have solid data partnerships in place.

One thing is sure, we have only touched the very beginning of this approach. But already today, it is evident that companies that utilize external data in their decision process, have far better chances of making better decisions. Giving them a better competitive edge.

search icon
No Results found.

Sorry, no results match your search criteria. Please try a different keyword or browse our categories for related information.

More Posts

View All
Product

Introducing Tembi's Size indication: Understand webshop market size easily

Knowing which webshops to focus on helps your business succeed. That’s why we've launched Tembi’s Size indication, a simple way to quickly understand how active and big (or small) any webshop is in the market compared to the largest online retailers.

What is the Size indication?

Tembi’s Size indications scores webshops from 1 to 100 points, dividing them into clear groups:

  • Small: 0-24 points
  • Medium: 25-49 points
  • Large: 50-74 points
  • Very Large: 75-100 points

This makes it easy to compare webshops and see where they stand compared to others.

How does it work?

The Size indication uses hundreds of data points per webshop to decide each webshop’s score, including:

  • Size and variety of product offerings
  • Investment in technology and infrastructure
  • Amount of website traffic
  • Types of delivery methods provided

These factors, and many more, provide a clear picture of how active and large a webshop is. Each webshop’s score is clearly explained, showing both positive and negative factors.  

Why the Size indication is useful

The Size indication makes market analysis simpler. You can quickly assess market size and find webshops that fit your ICP. When looking at thousands of prospects, Size indication allows you to sort all webshops, and see their size in relation to each other.

Combine Size indication with Growth Predictions

Tembi’s Size indication works hand-in-hand with our Growth Predictions feature. By combining these insights, you get a complete view of the market opportunity - clearly identifying which webshops are not only large and active but also likely to grow. This powerful combination helps you pinpoint the best opportunities for strategic action and growth.

Want to get started?

Log in to Tembi and check out the Size indication now. All Tembi clients have access to our Growth predictions and Size indication for free during July.

Product

Predict who will grow: Tembi launches webshop growth predictions

In business, knowledge is power, but foresight is transformational. Until now, most market intelligence relies on delivered reactive insights, offering clarity on the past or present but limited visibility into the future. Today, Tembi changes that by launching a groundbreaking predictive feature for e-commerce: Growth Predictions.

Why predictions matter

Understanding past performance is essential, but knowing what's coming next is where you truly gain a competitive advantage. With Growth Predictions, Tembi analyses hundreds of critical factors across hundreds of thousands of webshops, giving you a clear view of each retailer’s potential growth over the next 3 to 6 months.

How does it work?

Our unique predictive model evaluates comprehensive data points, including:

  • Financial trends
  • Employee growth and changes
  • Product portfolio developments
  • Web traffic insights (powered by SimilarWeb)
  • Technological investments
  • Infrastructure reliability
  • Delivery partnerships and methods
  • Category-specific trends

At the heart of this model is our proprietary AI-powered data collection methodology. For several years, we've meticulously collected, structured, and continuously updated vast datasets. Our advanced machine-learning algorithms use this rich historical data to identify patterns, learn from past behaviours, and generate precise, data-backed predictions. This ensures that our Growth Predictions aren’t guesses - they're calculated insights driven by robust AI techniques.

We translate these complex signals into straightforward, actionable insights, predicting whether a webshop will experience high growth, stability, or potential decline.

Transparent insights for smarter decisions

Growth Predictions don't just give you a simple score. They explain precisely why we anticipate certain growth patterns. For example:

  • Positive growth signals: Stable infrastructure, Product portfolio expansion, added delivery methods or partners.
  • Negative growth signals: Limited product portfolio expansion, insufficient technological investments.

This transparency helps you quickly understand the underlying strengths or vulnerabilities of any webshop.

Transform your commercial strategies

If you’re responsible for partnerships, sales, or logistics, Growth Predictions become your secret weapon. Prioritise your efforts, target the right segments and customers, optimise your resources, and proactively manage your commercial relationships by focusing on webshops that have a higher likeability to succeed.  

First of its kind

No other e-commerce intelligence tool provides predictive growth insights at this depth. Using our unique dataset of retailers and product portfolios, we provide a comprehensive mapping of the e-commerce industry, helping companies plan strategically.

We update our dataset bi-weekly, ensuring teams can track prospects, provide insights and get a competitive advantage.  

Interested in knowing more, book a demo with one of our experts.

Growth predictions are available for free as an early release during July for all our clients.

E-commerce

Delivery pricing trends ahead of Q4 2025

3
 min read

Delivery fees across the Nordics have followed clear seasonal patterns and strategic adjustments over the past two years. Drawing on data from over100,000 webshops in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway between Q1 2024 and Q32025, we track how average consumer delivery prices (in EUR) have shifted.

This analysis zooms in on the Q4 holiday peak, highlights country-specific behaviours, and compares delivery methods in urban areas - parcel lockers, pickup points, and home delivery. The aim is to show how webshops shape their pricing strategies and how these evolve through the year.

Seasonal pricing patterns and Q4 fluctuations

Seasonality is a defining feature of delivery pricing in the Nordics. Q4, the peak holiday quarter, typically brings stable or higher fees rather than discounts. In late 2024, Black Friday and Christmas did not lead to cheaper delivery - instead, many webshops kept prices firm or lifted them slightly.

· Sweden: average home delivery rose from €7.60 in Q3 2024 to €8.00 in Q4, the annual peak.
· Denmark: small increases, such as parcel shop delivery at €5.89 in Q4 versus €5.83 inQ3.
· Finland: parcel shop fees jumped by around 5% in Q4 2024.
· Norway: parcel box delivery peaked during the holiday quarter.

The pattern suggests that in high-demand Q4, retailers prioritise covering fulfilment costs over cutting fees - even when running heavy sales campaigns.

This shifts in Q1, when prices correct downward. After the holiday rush, many webshops reduced or normalised fees:

  • In Sweden, parcel box delivery fell from €5.26 in Q4 to €4.80 in Q1 2025.
  • In Denmark, the small Q4 upticks were rolled back early in 2025.
  • Norway saw a short-lived rise in home delivery(from €9.55 to €9.65 in Q1) before prices dropped sharply in Q2.

This Q1 softness reflects the post-holiday slowdown in demand and renewed competition to attract consumers during a quieter season.

All data is sourced via tembi.io

Q4 2024 stands out as a high point for delivery fees in several markets, corroborating that peak season surcharges and fewer free-shipping promos were in effect. In fact, during Black Week (Black Friday 2024), retailers across Noridcs reduced the prevalence of free shipping by 4% compared to 2023, opting instead to set spend thresholds or promote premium paid options (source: ingrid.com). In other words, fewer orders enjoyed “free delivery” in Q4 2024, as merchants nudged customers toward paid faster delivery or order bundling.This strategic move helped protect margins during the holiday boom – and consumers generally went along, paying for delivery when the value (speed, convenience) was clear (source: ingrid.com). The seasonal insight here is that peak demand doesn’t equal cheaper shipping; if anything, many webshops use the period to upsell premium delivery or maintain prices, rather than offer blanket free shipping.

Moving through 2025, the Q2 and Q3 2025 data show an interesting reset. By summer 2025, average delivery charges in many categories fell back to or below their levels from the previous holiday season. This sets the stage for how Q4 2025 might play out – which we’ll discuss in a moment.

Country-by-Country Insights

Each Nordic market shows distinct pricing dynamics, shaped by competition, consumer behaviour, and delivery costs.

Sweden

Swedish webshops consistently post the lowest delivery fees in the region.In early 2024, prices were modest - around €4.20 for locker delivery and €7.50 for home delivery. These rose steadily through the year, with parcel box and parcel shop deliveries more than 20% higher by Q3/Q4. Home delivery peaked at €8.00 in Q42024, reflecting inflationary pressures and webshop/carriers passing higher rates on to consumers.

In 2025, the trend reversed. By Q3 2025, parcel shop delivery had dropped from €6.57 in Q4 2024 to €5.37 (an 18% decline),while home delivery eased back to €7.59. This points to intensifying competition, with Swedish retailers willing to cut delivery prices quickly to gain an edge.

Denmark

Denmark’s delivery pricing remained stable through 2024, with parcel lockers and pickup points in the mid-€5 range and home delivery around €7.80–7.90. Even in Q4, increases were marginal- for example, parcel shop delivery at €5.89 in Q4 versus €5.83 in Q3.

The shift came in 2025. By Q3, parcel lockers averaged €5.00 and parcel shops €5.11 - 10–13% lower than the prior holiday season. Home delivery also dipped to €7.30 from €7.91 in Q4 2024. This gradual decline suggests Danish webshops began competing more actively on delivery price or carriers pressed the prices further down.

Finland

Finland remains the most expensive Nordic market for delivery - especially for home delivery. In 2024, Finnish shoppers paid €12–13 for home delivery, nearly double Sweden’s average. Out-of-home methods were also high at €7+. Prices climbed steadily through 2024, with parcel shops up 12% by Q4.

In 2025, home delivery crept even higher, peaking at €12.90 in Q2. But by Q3, parcel locker and shop fees had fallen sharply - down about 10% from Q2, back to early-2024 levels. Home delivery stabilised around€12.50.

Norway

Norway experienced the most pronounced swings. In 2024, home delivery peaked at €10.08 in Q2, while parcel lockers (€8.21) and parcel shops (€9.16) hit highs in Q3. Interestingly, Q4 home delivery was lower than earlier in the year at €9.55.

By 2025, Norwegian webshops had cut prices heavily, especially for out-of-home delivery. Parcel lockers fell from over €8in late 2024 to €6.64 by Q3 2025- a 20% year-on-year drop. Parcel shop delivery followed a similar pattern, down about €1.20 on average versus Q4 2024. Home delivery also eased slightly to €9.25 by Q3.

The widening price gap between home and pickup options suggests a deliberate push to shift volume to more cost-efficient methods. For carriers, Norway highlights how quickly competitive conditions can change - and the need to adjust pricing strategies in real time.

To summarize the country trends, Table 1 highlights how delivery fees in Q3 2025 compare to the last peak season (Q42024). Most markets saw notable declines in that period, especially for out-of-home deliveries:


Table 1: Average delivery price in Q4 2024 vs Q3 2025, by country and delivery method. Prices fell in most categories (especially parcel box and parcel shop deliveries) as of mid-2025, compared to the last holiday season.

Delivery Method Trends: Parcel Box vs. Parcel Shop vs. Home

Data clearly shows that out-of-home delivery is significantly cheaper for consumers in urban areas – a natural effect when carriers can deliver 5–10 times more parcels per driver compared with home delivery.

Parcel box (locker) delivery

· Cheapest option across all markets by 2025(~€5–6.5).
· Prices spiked in 2024 (e.g. Norway €6.6 → €8.3)but dropped back sharply in 2025.
· Volatility suggests retailers test price sensitivity, then reset as competition kicks in.

Parcel shop(pickup point) delivery

· Typically a few cents above lockers, but fell notably in 2025.
·  Norway: from ~€9 in 2024 to €7.2 by Q3 2025.
·  Pricing gap with home delivery widened, creating strong incentives for consumers to choose pickup.

Home delivery

· Premium service, consistently the most expensive.
· Held steady through 2024–25: ~€7.5 in SE/DK,~€9.3 in NO, ~€12.5 in FI.
· Only small price drops, with Sweden (-13% YoY)the exception.
·  Discounts remain rare and tied to high order values.

The bigger picture

Out-of-home delivery became cheaper in 2025, while home delivery kept its premium. This reflects a conscious decision: steer demand towards lockers and pickup points to cut last-mile costs and ease peak-season pressure. Black Week 2024 showed the effect in practice - locker usage rose by four percentage points and delivery times improved as shoppers embraced flexible collection (source: ingrid.com).

For logistics providers and retailers, aggressive pricing on out-of-home delivery seems to become a core lever: it nudges cost-conscious consumers, reduces operational strain, while keeping satisfaction high. But the gap has limits - home delivery still anchors convenience expectations and remains a profit lever. The real challenge is balance: keeping lockers and pickups highly attractive without eroding the value or accessibility of home delivery.

Collaboration between retailers and logistics providers is key here, ensuring service levels meet expectations as more customers choose out-of-home - seen clearly during Black Week, when lockers not only gained share but also delivered faster on average (source: ingrid.com).

Outlook forQ4 2025: What to Expect in the Peak Season

To keep the forecast transparent, we applied a simple model: for each country × delivery method, we took the Q4-over-Q3 seasonal change from 2024 and applied that ratio to Q3 2025 levels. Where 2025 trended lower than 2024, we also include a conservative midpoint between Q3 2025 and that baseline.

Regional forecast (Q4 2025)

· Parcel box(lockers): €5.6–6.0
· Parcel shop(pickup): €6.1–6.3
· Home delivery: €9.0–9.2

Seasonal lift from Q3 to Q4 looks modest. Home delivery remains the premium option, while lockers and parcel shops stay clearly cheaper.

By market

· Sweden: home ~€8.0 (flat vs last year); parcel shop ~€5.3 and lockers ~€5.0 (well below last year).
· Denmark: home ~€7.4; parcel shop ~€5.2; lockers ~€5.1 (all lower than last year).
· Finland: home ~€12.5 (still high); parcel shop ~€7.3; lockers ~€6.4 (both down year-on-year).
· Norway: home ~€9.25 (slightly below last year); parcel shop ~€7.1; lockers ~€6.7 (~20%down year-on-year).

Summary outlook for Q4 2025

Nordic delivery prices have eased through 2025 after peaking in late 2024, especially for out-of-home options (parcel box and parcel shop). Applying last year’s Q4-over-Q3 seasonality to current Q3 levels points to only small Q4 uplifts: lockers and pickups remain the low-cost choices, while home delivery stays premium and broadly flat.

Country patterns matter. Sweden and Denmark have lower 2025 bases and limited room for Q4 increases. Finland remains structurally high - especially on home delivery - so stability is more likely than hikes. Norway has corrected sharply this year, with retailers continuing to nudge volume toward cheaper lockers and pickups.

The underlying pricing strategies are clear:

· Continued shift to out-of-home delivery. Lower pricing here is deliberate - directing volume away from costly home delivery and easing last-mile strain.
· Home delivery as a premium anchor. Price cuts are modest; competition is about service quality (slots, ETAs, first-attempt success) rather than cents.
· Seasonal resets. After Christmas, prices ease in Q1—a cycle webshops use to stay competitive in slower months.

Finally, weigh this outlook against external factors that can quickly shift the picture: capacity constraints and consumer sentiment. If sentiment weakens, retailers may lean harder on thresholds and targeted incentives.

Market Intelligence

Predict growth and size with real market data

3
 min read

For most companies, two questions matter when looking at the e-commerce market: which webshops will grow and how large they are today. These are not easy to answer. Financial accounts are published once a year and often with long delays. Website traffic tools vary in accuracy. Sales input can be useful, but it is not consistent across markets.

Tembi approaches the problem differently. We track over 800.000 webshops in 22 European markets, visiting them every two weeks, and we convert that activity into a clear view of current size and likely growth.

What the outputs are

From this data, we produce two measures.

  • The size score (size estimation) shows how large a webshop is relative to others in the same market. It runs on a 0–100 scale and is built from multiple operating signals, not just a single proxy like traffic or revenue.
  • The growth outlook (Growht prediction) indicates whether a webshop is likely to expand, remain stable, or decline in the months ahead. We classify this into five levels: Negative, Flat, Low, High and Very High.

Together, these outputs give a comparable and timely view of the market that has not been available before.

The data behind the model

What makes this possible is the breadth of signals we collect. Every webshop is assessed on seven main areas:

  1. Export markets – selling into multiple countries is strongly linked to scale and resilience.
  2. Delivery setup – the number and type of carriers and methods say a lot about maturity.
  3. Technical add-ons – tools for reviews, marketing, or experimentation signal investment.
  4. Infrastructure – the platform and payment systems in use, from lightweight to enterprise.
  5. Financials and employees – a valuable anchor when available, though not the only input.
  6. Traffic – used carefully as a directional trend.
  7. Products – the number of SKUs, their development over time, and their categories.

It is the combination of these factors, updated every two weeks, that produces a reliable picture of both size and growth.

Why this matters

Older approaches depend on delayed filings, unstable traffic estimates, or anecdotal sales input. They describe the past, not the present. By contrast, Tembi provides a structured, repeatable model that updates with the market itself. A Danish fashion webshop and a Spanish electronics retailer can be measured on the same scale, and shifts in momentum can be detected months before they appear in official reports.

See positive and negative signals to better understand the Growth predictions indication.

What this enables

  • Sales teams can prioritise accounts that are growing.
  • Category managers can see which product areas are moving up or down.
  • Carriers and enablers can track portfolio risk and adjust before market shifts affect revenue.
  • Corporate development can identify acquisition targets with proven momentum early.

This is not prediction for prediction’s sake. It is about replacing guesswork with evidence that is current, structured and comparable.

Tembi provides a way to see the market as it develops — which webshops are growing, how large they are, and where categories are shifting. It offers the clarity needed to make decisions with confidence, based on how the market is moving today.

See it in action

Growth predictions and Size estimation are available on all markets Tembi has been active on for more then three months.

Product

Introducing Tembi's Size indication: Understand webshop market size easily

3
 min read

Knowing which webshops to focus on helps your business succeed. That’s why we've launched Tembi’s Size indication, a simple way to quickly understand how active and big (or small) any webshop is in the market compared to the largest online retailers.

What is the Size indication?

Tembi’s Size indications scores webshops from 1 to 100 points, dividing them into clear groups:

  • Small: 0-24 points
  • Medium: 25-49 points
  • Large: 50-74 points
  • Very Large: 75-100 points

This makes it easy to compare webshops and see where they stand compared to others.

How does it work?

The Size indication uses hundreds of data points per webshop to decide each webshop’s score, including:

  • Size and variety of product offerings
  • Investment in technology and infrastructure
  • Amount of website traffic
  • Types of delivery methods provided

These factors, and many more, provide a clear picture of how active and large a webshop is. Each webshop’s score is clearly explained, showing both positive and negative factors.  

Why the Size indication is useful

The Size indication makes market analysis simpler. You can quickly assess market size and find webshops that fit your ICP. When looking at thousands of prospects, Size indication allows you to sort all webshops, and see their size in relation to each other.

Combine Size indication with Growth Predictions

Tembi’s Size indication works hand-in-hand with our Growth Predictions feature. By combining these insights, you get a complete view of the market opportunity - clearly identifying which webshops are not only large and active but also likely to grow. This powerful combination helps you pinpoint the best opportunities for strategic action and growth.

Want to get started?

Log in to Tembi and check out the Size indication now. All Tembi clients have access to our Growth predictions and Size indication for free during July.

Product

Predict who will grow: Tembi launches webshop growth predictions

3
 min read

In business, knowledge is power, but foresight is transformational. Until now, most market intelligence relies on delivered reactive insights, offering clarity on the past or present but limited visibility into the future. Today, Tembi changes that by launching a groundbreaking predictive feature for e-commerce: Growth Predictions.

Why predictions matter

Understanding past performance is essential, but knowing what's coming next is where you truly gain a competitive advantage. With Growth Predictions, Tembi analyses hundreds of critical factors across hundreds of thousands of webshops, giving you a clear view of each retailer’s potential growth over the next 3 to 6 months.

How does it work?

Our unique predictive model evaluates comprehensive data points, including:

  • Financial trends
  • Employee growth and changes
  • Product portfolio developments
  • Web traffic insights (powered by SimilarWeb)
  • Technological investments
  • Infrastructure reliability
  • Delivery partnerships and methods
  • Category-specific trends

At the heart of this model is our proprietary AI-powered data collection methodology. For several years, we've meticulously collected, structured, and continuously updated vast datasets. Our advanced machine-learning algorithms use this rich historical data to identify patterns, learn from past behaviours, and generate precise, data-backed predictions. This ensures that our Growth Predictions aren’t guesses - they're calculated insights driven by robust AI techniques.

We translate these complex signals into straightforward, actionable insights, predicting whether a webshop will experience high growth, stability, or potential decline.

Transparent insights for smarter decisions

Growth Predictions don't just give you a simple score. They explain precisely why we anticipate certain growth patterns. For example:

  • Positive growth signals: Stable infrastructure, Product portfolio expansion, added delivery methods or partners.
  • Negative growth signals: Limited product portfolio expansion, insufficient technological investments.

This transparency helps you quickly understand the underlying strengths or vulnerabilities of any webshop.

Transform your commercial strategies

If you’re responsible for partnerships, sales, or logistics, Growth Predictions become your secret weapon. Prioritise your efforts, target the right segments and customers, optimise your resources, and proactively manage your commercial relationships by focusing on webshops that have a higher likeability to succeed.  

First of its kind

No other e-commerce intelligence tool provides predictive growth insights at this depth. Using our unique dataset of retailers and product portfolios, we provide a comprehensive mapping of the e-commerce industry, helping companies plan strategically.

We update our dataset bi-weekly, ensuring teams can track prospects, provide insights and get a competitive advantage.  

Interested in knowing more, book a demo with one of our experts.

Growth predictions are available for free as an early release during July for all our clients.