Sector studyPDF · StudyRetailPDF in French

The leak comes after the sale — Retail & customer experience, France 2026

By Jason Wood

August 2026PDF · 20 pages18 min read

What you will discover

1French e-commerce is worth €196.4bn but only 12% of product sales: 88% of buying still involves the store, and value is created between channels — exactly where nobody measures.
2The number one friction point is not the purchase but the after-sales: service and complaints concentrate the main friction while accounting for just 8% of the volume assessed.
3The channel companies push is not the one that satisfies: chatbot satisfaction caps at 50% against 72% for the phone, and 90% of customers would rather wait for a human.
448% of customers have perceived an adviser as rushed or stressed — and 84% of them say it degraded the exchange. Customers do not see your organisation, but they feel its strain.
5The first acquisition channel is not a media budget: word of mouth (37%) weighs nearly twice as much as advertising (19%). Every failed after-sales experience is therefore a compounded loss.

The full study develops each point with sourced data, sector analysis and actionable levers.

Available in French

This study is currently published in French only. An English edition is on its way — subscribe below and you will receive it as soon as it is out.

Contents

On the programme.

The thesis

What the sector optimises is not what costs it: retail invests where the journey no longer breaks, and under-invests where it truly does.

Sources & method

FEVAD, Ipsos bva, KPMG France, PMP Strategy / Skeepers / IFOP, Eurostat, CNIL, DGCCRF — every figure dated and attributed, with two reading rules.

The market

€196.4bn, 3.2bn transactions, a €62 average basket — and the pivot of the study: 12% e-commerce against 88% involving the store. Generative AI enters the journey.

The signals

Five signals the dashboard never connects: automation, transparency, after-sales, the quality of human contact, and word of mouth.

The figures that count — and those that are missing

Market and relationship dashboards, the KPMG sector ranking, and the most telling gap: no reliable public benchmark on retention in French retail.

The journey

The full frieze, from discovery to loyalty, and the precise location of the seams — the journey does not break at the purchase, it breaks at the crossings.

The four leaks

Our analysis: conversion lost at channel crossings, after-sales treated as a cost, the human automated rather than made reliable, and trust spent in silence.

The levers

Re-instrument around the seams, treat after-sales as a retention engine, put the human back in the right order, make transparency a standard.

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