In Poland’s retail sector, 2025 was marked by two major developments: the rollout of the deposit return system and the adoption of regulations under which Christmas Eve became a non-working day. Yet it will not be sudden revolutions, but evolutionary changes that will have the greatest impact on the sector’s near- and long-term future. The key pressures include tightening margins, an uncertain economic outlook, rising consumer expectations, and labor shortages. Taken together, these factors are forcing retailers to look for savings. Does the new year therefore mean a need for digital transformation and a revision of business strategies?
New technologies as a route to profitability?
For years, low prices have been the primary criterion guiding customers’ product choices. Naturally, they have become a major source of competitive advantage in retail—often pushing store chains close to the edge of profitability. Retailers are increasingly seeking solutions in IT, which can help optimize fragmented and duplicated processes. Research from 2025 shows that 39% of retail organizations are already implementing cost-reducing technologies.[1] As Witold Miśniakiewicz, CEO of INEOGroup, explains, beyond financial benefits these tools can also help address other challenges facing retail chains today.
“Modern sales systems based on a modular architecture primarily enable the automation of ordering, delivery management, and inventory control. They can also be integrated with other solutions that optimize working time—for example, mobile applications for store staff. Tools like these speed up everyday tasks such as receiving deliveries, managing goods, printing labels, and checking prices. At the same time, they reduce the risk of manual data-entry errors. All of this helps lower operating costs in store networks. In addition, they are a way to mitigate the problem of a shrinking retail workforce,” says Witold Miśniakiewicz, CEO of INEOGroup.
Retail is becoming more inclusive
Beyond task automation, technology is also being applied to another staffing-related issue in retail: onboarding new employees. This has become particularly important given the globalization of labor markets. Retail chains are trying to fill staffing gaps by opening up to employees with disabilities and to workers from abroad. According to Poland’s Central Statistical Office (GUS), more than one million foreign nationals are already working in Poland.[2] A significant share of them have found employment in retail.
This new organizational reality requires retailers to adopt a more inclusive approach to staffing—visible, among other things, in how they onboard employees with disabilities or from abroad. Technology offers many possibilities here. One example is multilingual POS systems with separated fiscal logic, allowing interfaces to be switched between different languages. This works both for employees who do not speak Polish fluently and for customers using self-checkout. Such solutions translate directly into business benefits: they shorten onboarding time and reduce the risk of high turnover.
Social commerce strengthens its position in retail
In 2026, another major challenge for retailers will be changing consumer behavior. All signs suggest that omnichannel will reach an entirely new level. While multichannel sales are still mainly associated with combining brick-and-mortar and e-commerce operations, another sales channel has been growing stronger for some time. Global research shows that one in three consumers already buys products via social media. This share is highest among Gen Z (44%) and millennials (40%), and somewhat lower among Gen X (28%) and baby boomers (17%).[3]
This trend is also reflected in Poland. Nineteen percent of Poles have encountered social commerce, and one in three people in that group makes purchases via social media at least once a month. Over the course of a year, respondents use this option on average more than seven times[4]—a noticeable increase compared with last year’s report, where social-media shoppers declared they bought this way about five times per year.[5] As Patrycja Biergiel, Senior Product Designer at INEOGroup, points out, these figures show how the role of social media is changing in modern retail.
“Up to a certain point, social media served retail brands mainly for image-building, consumer communication, and product promotion. They supported the early stages of the sales funnel—capturing attention and sparking interest—but the transaction was finalized elsewhere, usually in an online store. Today, more and more users buy products directly in social media. Being present in places like Facebook Marketplace is a natural way for retailers to increase revenue, yet not everyone takes advantage of it. Meanwhile, new options are already on the horizon—experts believe there is a strong chance that TikTok Shop will enter the Polish market in 2026. This feature generated $19 billion in global sales in the third quarter of 2025.[6] It is therefore worth considering your brand’s presence in this medium,” explains Patrycja Biergiel, Senior Product Designer at INEOGroup.
Customers expect personalized promotions and experiences
The evolution of omnichannel is not the only consumer-behavior challenge retailers face. Another is the need to account for individual customer needs at different stages of the purchasing process. Thirty-nine percent of consumers expect companies to offer personalized recommendations or experiences based on past shopping behavior.[7] One in four Polish consumers admits they would use online stores more willingly if they received personalized promotions (25% of responses).[8] Among the youngest age group (15–24), the share is even higher at 35%.
The potential uplift in revenue and customer retention enabled by personalization is estimated at 4–6%.[9] As Michał Miśniakiewicz, Chief Technology Officer at INEOGroup, notes, a key obstacle to achieving these benefits is the lack of integration across sales channels.
“Depending on our needs, we use different sales channels. If each channel runs on a different system, information about our purchase history is collected and stored in separate databases. These data silos cannot provide a single customer view, making it impossible to personalize offers or promotions. This usually happens when stores operate on older, monolithic systems with complex infrastructure and very limited integration capabilities. To address this challenge, transformation toward modular architecture and event-driven integration is necessary. This change does not have to happen overnight—existing systems can be replaced gradually, which helps limit transformation costs,” adds Michał Miśniakiewicz, Chief Technology Officer at INEOGroup.
Social and economic changes are significantly shaping retail. The future of the sector will depend on whether retailers can reduce the impact of these pressures on their businesses. The main challenges in 2026 will be labor shortages, rising consumer expectations, and margin pressure—and the resulting need to maintain profitability. A key opportunity for retail lies in modern technology, which enables automation of many sales processes and improves the day-to-day work of people employed in stores.
References:
[1] Adyen, Retail Report 2025, chapter 5
[2] GUS, 2025, Foreign nationals working in Poland in May 2025
[3] Adyen, Retail Report 2025, chapter 1
[4] Gemius, Polskie Badania Internetu, IAB Polska, 2025, E-commerce in Poland 2025
[5] Gemius, Polskie Badania Internetu, IAB Polska, 2024, E-commerce in Poland 2024
[6] How TikTok came to rival eBay as a global online shopping destination
[7] Adyen, Retail Report 2025, chapter 4
[8] Gemius, Polskie Badania Internetu, IAB Polska, 2025, E-commerce in Poland 2025
[9] EuroCommerce, The State of Grocery Retail Europe 2025
