B2B ecommerce across Europe now exceeds $1.3 trillion in annual gross merchandise value, growing at over 10% year on year. Wholesalers like Booker, Bestway, Metro, and Bidfood have invested heavily in their digital platforms, with some now conducting the majority of transactions online. Trade channels like Screwfix and RS Components have built digital experiences that rival the best consumer retailers.
Yet for most brands, the B2B digital shelf remains an afterthought. Execution scores in wholesale channels typically lag 10 to 15 percentage points behind B2C retail. Product content is thinner. Search optimisation is less sophisticated. And critically, very few brands are applying any form of structured analytics to understand how their products appear across these platforms.
For many of the brands we work with, wholesale and trade channels represent a meaningful share of revenue. These channels have their own dynamics, their own complexity, and their own opportunities. This article explores what is changing in the B2B digital shelf landscape and why brands that pay attention to it are better positioned to capture growth.
How large is the B2B ecommerce opportunity in Europe?
The scale of B2B ecommerce is often underestimated. Globally, B2B online transactions are valued at approximately $32 trillion, roughly five times the size of B2C. European B2B ecommerce GMV reached $1.3 trillion in 2022 and is projected to hit $2.2 trillion by 2027. The UK alone generates an estimated $137 to $225 billion in B2B online revenue annually, depending on the definition used.
The behavioural shift behind these numbers is equally significant. McKinsey's 2024 B2B Pulse Survey found that 67% of B2B businesses now prefer digital interactions, up from just 20% in 2017. B2B buyers use an average of 10.2 channels in their purchasing journey, up from five in 2016. In the UK, fewer than 25% of B2B buyers say they ever want to interact with sales representatives in person again.
For brands selling through wholesale and trade channels, this shift means their products are increasingly being discovered, evaluated, and purchased through digital platforms. The digital shelf in B2B is becoming a primary point of commercial interaction, even if it sits alongside rather than replacing the consumer retail channels where most brands focus their analytical attention.
What does digital maturity look like in B2B?
The assumption that B2B and wholesale platforms are universally basic is increasingly outdated. A spectrum of digital maturity now exists across the landscape, and the leaders are genuinely sophisticated.
RS Components generates over 60% of group revenue through digital channels, operating 29 localised websites across 32 countries with more than 500,000 products. Their product detail pages include multiple high-quality images, technical datasheets, videos, CAD models, and comprehensive specifications. RS Group benchmarks itself against B2C market leaders, not against other B2B players.
Screwfix achieves a conversion rate of 6.5 to 7.0%, nearly double the typical industry average, with around 7 million unique visitors per week and annual online sales approaching £1 billion. Their platform includes ratings and reviews, personalised promotional grids, and predictive search with product images. Their migration to a composable commerce architecture has enabled innovations like 20-minute delivery and one-minute click-and-collect across 935 stores.
In grocery wholesale, the digital transformation is accelerating rapidly. Booker (owned by Tesco) launched a major digital platform refresh in September 2025 with improved navigation, high-resolution product photography, personalised homepages by retailer fascia, and product pairing recommendations. Bidfood now conducts over 80% of its transactions online through its myBidfood platform. Parfetts crossed a milestone in 2025 with online orders consistently exceeding 50% of total sales.
Metro AG, the largest European wholesale operator, is targeting 40% of sales through digital by 2030 and building a B2B marketplace projected to exceed €3 billion. Their dedicated technology division employs approximately 2,500 people and calculates individual pricing per customer in real time, handling baskets of 500+ items.
At the other end of the spectrum, many smaller European wholesalers still lack meaningful digital platforms, particularly in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe. This unevenness creates a fragmented landscape where digital shelf performance varies significantly by platform and by market.
How does the B2B digital shelf differ from B2C?
The fundamentals of digital shelf analytics apply in B2B just as they do in consumer retail: product content quality, search visibility, availability, and competitive positioning all matter. But several characteristics make B2B distinct, and understanding them is important for brands that want to get the most from their wholesale channels.
Search behaviour is more functional and brand-specific
B2B buyers tend to search with greater specificity than consumers. Searches are more likely to include brand names, exact product codes, pack sizes, and case quantities. Category-level browsing is less common. Where a consumer might search for "energy drink" on Tesco, a trade buyer on Booker is more likely to search "Red Bull 24 pack" or a specific SKU reference.
This has implications for search optimisation strategy. The keyword sets that drive performance in B2C may not translate directly to B2B. Brands need to understand the distinct search vocabulary of trade buyers and optimise accordingly.
Product content is thinner but improving
Many B2B platforms still operate with limited product detail pages compared to consumer retail. Fewer images per product, less structured content, and minimal use of enhanced or rich media remain common. Industry research suggests B2B product pages average fewer than one image per SKU, and product content remains a major challenge for B2B ecommerce operators.
This is changing as wholesalers invest in their digital platforms, but the gap between B2C and B2B content quality remains significant for most brands. That gap represents both a risk (poor content leading to lower visibility and conversion) and an opportunity (brands that invest in B2B content gain a competitive advantage in a less crowded environment).
Trade-specific metrics shape buyer decisions
In wholesale, buyers evaluate products on factors that have no direct B2C equivalent. Price mark packs (PMPs) are a defining feature of UK grocery wholesale, with approximately 76% of convenience retailers stocking them. Wholesale platforms display PMP retail prices alongside wholesale case prices and retailer margins, allowing buyers to assess profitability at the point of purchase.
Booker, for example, shows profit-on-return percentages directly alongside product listings. This metric influences purchasing decisions in ways that have no parallel in consumer retail. When one product variant shows a 28% margin and another shows 45%, that difference directly affects which products independent retailers choose to stock.
Case size configurations, minimum order quantities, and volume discount structures also form part of the B2B digital shelf in ways that require specific analytical understanding.
Password-protected catalogues limit visibility
Many B2B and wholesale platforms sit behind login walls, with pricing and full product information visible only to registered trade customers. This is standard practice in foodservice (Bidfood, Brakes), common in grocery wholesale (Booker, Bestway), and effectively universal in pharmaceutical distribution.
Some platforms adopt a hybrid approach with public product browsing but gated pricing. Others remain entirely behind login walls. For brands, this means monitoring B2B digital shelf performance requires obtaining access credentials through client partnerships, making it operationally more complex than B2C monitoring but no less important for the brands whose revenue depends on these channels.
What is the Direct-to-Business (D2B) trend and why does it matter?
One of the most significant emerging trends is brands building their own B2B ordering platforms rather than relying exclusively on traditional wholesalers. This Direct-to-Business (D2B) model adds a new dimension to the B2B digital shelf landscape.
PepsiCo's PepsiConnect platform now operates across 6 to 10 European countries, reportedly delivering 13 to 19% incremental sales on beverage and snack categories through digital ordering, personalised promotions, and loyalty programmes. Coca-Cola HBC has built a B2B platform across 28 countries, even piloting ordering via WhatsApp.
The wholesale marketplace Faire has reached a $5.2 billion valuation with over 700,000 independent retailers on the platform. The total number of B2B marketplaces has grown from approximately 75 five years ago to over 750 today.
For brands, this creates a more fragmented B2B channel landscape. Products now appear on traditional wholesale platforms, specialist B2B marketplaces, and potentially their own D2B portals simultaneously. Maintaining content consistency, tracking performance, and understanding competitive dynamics across this expanding set of touchpoints is the same multi-channel challenge brands have spent years solving in B2C, but with fewer tools and less established processes in B2B.
Is retail media arriving in B2B channels?
The emergence of retail media in B2B marks a pivotal development. While B2C retail media has grown into a $175 billion global market, B2B retail media is in its foundation phase. But concrete examples are already live.
Kingfisher's partnership with CitrusAd now spans all its banners including Screwfix and TradePoint, making it one of the first trade-focused retail media deployments anywhere. The group has created a dedicated head of retail media role and anticipates retail media revenues reaching 3% of group ecommerce sales. In-store digital screens are being piloted in Screwfix locations, bridging online and offline advertising.
Amazon Business already operates the most mature B2B retail media platform. Since 2024, advertisers can run B2B-exclusive Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands campaigns across 10 markets including the UK, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. B2B shoppers are reported to be three times more likely to purchase after viewing a product page, with 50% lower return rates and 80% more units per order.
Booker's September 2025 digital relaunch explicitly introduced new media and advertising opportunities for suppliers, signalling that UK grocery wholesale is entering the retail media space. In the US, UNFI launched its Media Network in 2024, with digital services including retail media now accounting for approximately 25% of its adjusted EBITDA.
When brands begin investing in B2B retail media, the need to understand and optimise their digital shelf presence in wholesale channels becomes commercially essential. Advertising spend in any channel demands analytical accountability, and B2B is no exception.
How does rapid delivery change B2B purchasing expectations?
The convergence of quick-commerce and B2B trade is accelerating. TradeKart has partnered with Toolstation across 475+ stores nationwide, connecting tradespeople with local merchants for delivery in as little as 30 to 60 minutes. Screwfix operates its own 20-minute Sprint delivery service and has partnered with Deliveroo for rapid fulfilment.
B2B buyers increasingly expect B2C-grade fulfilment, but with an important nuance. McKinsey found that 77% of businesses prioritise reliability of delivery timeframes over speed. Punctuality matters more than pace. This has direct digital shelf implications: stock visibility, real-time inventory accuracy, and delivery promise transparency become core elements of the B2B product experience, not just logistics concerns.
For brands, this means availability monitoring in B2B is evolving beyond simple in-stock or out-of-stock tracking. Understanding whether products are available for rapid delivery, what delivery options are displayed on the product page, and how stock availability compares to competitors is becoming part of the B2B digital shelf equation.
Why should brands pay more attention to their B2B digital shelf?
The practical question for brands is straightforward: if wholesale and trade channels contribute meaningfully to your revenue, they deserve more structured attention than most brands currently give them.
This does not mean treating B2B as equivalent to consumer retail in terms of resource allocation. Consumer retail will remain the primary focus for most brands and for the analytics providers that support them. But the B2B channel is growing fast, digitising rapidly, and becoming more competitive. The brands that give it some focused analytical attention, rather than leaving it entirely unmonitored, are better positioned to capture the growth that is clearly coming.
In practical terms, this means extending content monitoring to cover B2B platforms alongside B2C retailers, so that gaps and inconsistencies are identified. It means understanding the distinct search dynamics of B2B buyers and optimising product content accordingly. And it means recognising that as wholesale platforms invest in their digital capabilities, the bar for execution in B2B is rising.
The opportunity is real, and the brands that act on it early have a genuine advantage in a space where most competitors are not yet paying attention.
Interested in understanding how your products perform across B2B and wholesale channels?
Find out how eStore can help you extend your digital shelf visibility to include the trade platforms that matter to your business. Learn more about our B2B capabilities.
References and Further Reading
eStore Resources
- Digital Shelf Analytics Platform: Learn about our complete digital shelf monitoring capabilities
- eCategory Management: How strategic category insights strengthen retailer relationships
Related Topics
- Why the Extra 4% Matters: The impact of data accuracy on digital shelf decisions
- Content Compliance in 2025: Regulatory requirements shaping product content strategy
Filip Zok, Chief Experience Officer
December 2025
