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Gartner Magic Quadrant for WMS

Manhattan is a 17-time Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for WMS, recognised for its cloud-native, microservices-based warehouse management solutions.

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Unified Commerce Maturity Holds Key to Success for European Retailers

Key Takeaways

  • Unified commerce is now critical for competitive advantage, as 38% of previously differentiating capabilities have become standard and only 7% of European retailers have reached leadership maturity.
  • Retail complexity is intensifying, with fragmented omnichannel customer journeys (66% using multiple touchpoints) and rising logistics costs (+20%) putting pressure on margins and customer experience.
  • AI and unified commerce together are shaping the future, enabling real-time personalisation and smarter operations, with adoption still low and creating a major opportunity for retailers who invest in connected, API-first ecosystems.

According to the latest edit of the Unified Commerce Benchmark, 38% of differentiating capabilities identified in 2024 have become table stakes in 2026.

 

This paints a clear picture: standing still is not an acceptable strategy. As the expectations of modern consumers increase, competitive advantage must come from building connected, personalised experiences that continually evolve.

 

Across Europe, unified commerce maturity continues to advance with retailers demonstrating particular strength in operational consistency and cross-border fulfillment where advanced logistics networks and integrated service are required, yet only 7% have achieved ‘Leadership’ level.

 

European retail is at an inflection point.  As customer journeys splinter, global logistics and fulfillment costs continue to rise, and AI becomes an active participant in the commerce narrative, unified commerce offers retailers a practical, navigable roadmap to increased revenue, efficiency and customer loyalty.

 

The Fragmented Consumer Journey

According to the 2026 benchmark report, over 66% of consumers now report using two or more channels before completing a purchase. Today’s path to purchase is far from linear, with social platforms such as Tik Tok, and (more recently) AI ‘answer engines’ fundamentally changing how customers discover, evaluate, and buy.

 

Execution Economics Are Under Pressure

Global logistics and fulfilment costs have risen by over 20% in the last three years, stress-testing the economics of retail across every European country. Customers now expect faster delivery, flexible delivery options, and seamless service as standard, not part of premium offerings. Brands that cannot meet these expectations at scale pay for it in both cost and customer loyalty.

 

AI Is Now an Active Commerce Participant

McKinsey forecasts up to $5 trillion in agentic commerce sales by 2030. While the first wave of AI in retail was about efficiency, automating tasks and reducing cost, the next wave is about intelligence and autonomous decision making. That means systems that anticipate demand, personalise in real-time, and resolve friction before customers encounter it.

 

AI and agentic workflows are poised to redefine commerce across Europe, but adoption remains uneven and the gap between ambition and execution is widening. Although chatbots and virtual assistants are now widespread, fewer than 5% of retailers globally offer dynamic, real-time personalisation powered by AI.

 

Because Manhattan’s cloud-native, microservices platform leverages trusted data from across order management, point of sale, customer service, store inventory and warehouse and transportation, embedded agents can perceive, reason and act across shopping, checkout, fulfillment and service as one continuous unified commerce experience, rather than isolated, channel-specific optimisations.

 

Rather than AI replacing the unified commerce foundation, it amplifies it.

 

It should come as no surprise that the European retailers best positioned to lead in the agentic era are those that have already aligned their operational processes and IT architecture to an API-first model.

 

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To summarise, the 2026 benchmark report highlights the 2X benefits of unified commerce leadership. It also underlines this mantle is becoming more difficult to achieve and maintain as retailers across Europe face a compounding set of hyper-local, industry-specific, regulatory and macroeconomic challenges.

 

Those retailers pulling ahead in unified commerce are not winning on any single capability in isolation: they are the brands living the philosophy of ‘unification’ each day across every area of their operations and customers’ experiences.

 

They are succeeding because they have reimagined the entire end-to-end customer journey, unifying people, processes, channels and technology, leaning in and embracing new tools (like AI) and dynamic, shifting consumer trends.  

 

Want to continue the unified commerce conversation? Connect with me on LinkedIn or join me at Retail Technology Show, London, World Retail Congress, Berlin (both in April) or Shoptalk, Barcelona, in June.