The Maze: A retailer entering a European market needs to decide how customers can receive their orders. Copying its home-market delivery menu can miss a very different local setup. In October 2026, locker delivery appeared at 91% of the largest Estonian webshops and 9% of the largest Belgian ones. These are shares of retailers offering an option, not shares of shoppers choosing it. The practical question is what a comparable local competitor makes available before a shopper pays.
Locker availability spans an 82-percentage-point gap. The seven-market Tembi comparison puts Estonia at 91%, Finland at 63%, Greece at 42%, Norway at 38%, Sweden at 22%, Denmark at 13% and Belgium at 9%. Each figure measures the share of the source-defined largest webshops offering collection from self-service lockers. The difference between Estonia and Belgium describes two markets at one point in time. It is not a collapse from 91% to 9%, nor evidence that Belgian shoppers dislike lockers. A retailer can use this contrast to identify a local benchmarking question; the numbers cannot explain its cause.
Parcel shops and lockers are different delivery choices. A parcel shop is a staffed collection point; a locker is a self-service compartment. Among the largest Danish webshops, 79% offered parcel shops but 13% offered lockers, a 66-point gap. In Finland, the corresponding shares were 48% and 63%. Combining both methods into one label such as collection away from home would hide a useful operational distinction. A retailer choosing partners needs to check which kind of collection network appears at competing checkouts. A generic promise of pickup can conceal a very different customer journey.
Multiple delivery methods can coexist. Estonia combines 97% home-delivery availability with 91% locker availability. Those figures cannot be added into a split of parcel volume: one webshop can offer both. Sweden has 51% parcel-shop availability, 44% home delivery and 22% lockers in this cohort. That does not establish which method shoppers select or which appears first. Checkout observation records the menu a retailer presents. Orders, satisfaction and profitability require different evidence. The distinction matters before turning a competitor's delivery menu into a forecast of demand.
The comparison needs a matched competitor set. The exhibit covers seven selected countries and the largest-webshop segment, not every European retailer. Its shares are minimums because some options remain unclassified. It supplies neither sample counts nor the exact size threshold. A useful next step is to compare retailers selling similar products to similar destinations, then check fees, delivery promises and the order of options separately. Differences in those conditions could change the commercial decision even when two shops offer the same method. The table helps frame that investigation; it does not settle which carrier or network to buy.
Why it matters: Delivery planning crosses two decisions: which options a retailer offers and which option a customer chooses. This evidence informs the first. Before adding a locker partner or copying a foreign delivery menu, check a comparable local checkout and test the offer against actual orders. A missing option is a reason to investigate, not a business case by itself. The lesson travels beyond these seven markets; their percentages do not.
