# Denmark is the EU's #1 ecommerce country. Here's why – Carsten Rose Lundberg > Carsten Rose Lundberg heads digital commerce at Dansk Erhverv, the Danish Chamber of Commerce, and has worked with the internet since 1996. He arrives with two props: The trophy handed to the winners of the Danish ecommerce awards, and a hundred-page report built on answers from 14.000 Danish consumers. Both say the same thing. Danish ecommerce is in good shape. - **Series**: Hello Retail Conversations - **Episode**: Episode 09 - **Guest**: Carsten Rose Lundberg — VP of Digital Commerce, [Dansk Erhverv](https://www.danskerhverv.dk/) - **Published**: October 2, 2026 - **Watch**: [https://helloretail.com/en/conversations/denmark-eu-number-one-ecommerce-country/](https://helloretail.com/en/conversations/denmark-eu-number-one-ecommerce-country/) - **TwentyThree photo_id**: 132579146 --- ## About this episode Carsten Rose Lundberg heads digital commerce at Dansk Erhverv, the Danish Chamber of Commerce, and has worked with the internet since 1996. He arrives with two props: The trophy handed to the winners of the Danish ecommerce awards, and a hundred-page report built on answers from 14.000 Danish consumers. Both say the same thing. Danish ecommerce is in good shape. The numbers back him up. In the first half of 2026, Danish online revenue passed 100 billion kroner for the first time. The European E-commerce Report 2026 from Ecommerce Europe and EuroCommerce puts Denmark top in Europe for online spend per person, at €4.456 a year. Carsten puts part of that down to resilience: Danish shops have lived through COVID and price pressure from Chinese marketplaces, and when they can't get through something, they go around it. Then he takes apart a common belief. When Danes were asked why they made their last online purchase, 34% said convenience. Selection came second, and price came third at 24%. Price matters, he says, but it isn't why most people shop online. Loyalty holds up too: 74% said their last purchase was from a store they had bought from before, which only happens when the first experience kept its promise. Carsten and host Rasmus Skjoldan, Hello Retail's CMO, also talk about why he prefers the word relevance to personalization and why consent is worth gold to the shops he talks to. The customer journey gets its share too: It now zigzags between social media, webshops and physical stores. They end on AI. 45% of Danes have now used it somewhere in their digital customer journey, up from 38% in June 2025. Carsten's point is that AI is good at turning an intention into a product, but before intention comes inspiration, and that part is still the shop's job. --- ## Guest — Carsten Rose Lundberg Carsten Rose Lundberg leads digital commerce at Dansk Erhverv, the Danish Chamber of Commerce, and has been there for close to seven years. His internet career started in 1996. Back then, you couldn't buy anything online. Today his team helps members make informed decisions through reports, webinars, conferences and the Danish ecommerce awards. - **Title**: VP of Digital Commerce - **Company**: [Dansk Erhverv](https://www.danskerhverv.dk/) (The Danish Chamber of Commerce) - **LinkedIn**: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/carstenroselundberg/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carstenroselundberg/) --- ## Notable quotes > "People do not purchase things online primarily because they think they can get it at the cheapest price." > > **Carsten Rose Lundberg, VP of Digital Commerce, Dansk Erhverv** > "Give them good service, live up to your promise and they will come back." > > **Carsten Rose Lundberg, VP of Digital Commerce, Dansk Erhverv** > "As it is right now, AI doesn't inspire you." > > **Carsten Rose Lundberg, VP of Digital Commerce, Dansk Erhverv** --- ## Key takeaways 1. **Danes shop online for convenience first, and price comes third** — In Dansk Erhverv's consumer survey, 34% said their last online purchase came down to convenience. Selection was second, and price came third at 24%. Carsten's advice is to look at your own numbers, because your audience may not match the national picture. 2. **Loyalty online is real, and you earn it by keeping your promise** — 74% of Danes said their last online purchase was from a store they had bought from before. Carsten prefers the word relevance. Knowing your customers is good customer service, and the consent they give you is worth protecting. 3. **AI turns intention into a product. Inspiration still comes first** — 45% of Danes have used AI somewhere in their digital customer journey, up from 38% in June 2025. AI is good at turning a vague idea into a specific product, but Carsten points out that it doesn't inspire anyone yet. That part is still up to the shop. --- ## Transcript by chapter ### 0:00 — Introduction and the Ecommerce Award *Karsten introduces the tangible prizes of the ecommerce awards and the long history of the event facilitated by the Danish Chamber of Commerce.* Nice to be here. Why did you bring this? I brought this because this is the price you get if you win one of the ten categories of the ecommerce award. Which is one of the things that we facilitate in the Danish Chamber of Commerce. And in a digital world, it's nice to have something tangible. And you can lift it, Rasmus. I can touch it. Yeah, you can touch it, you can lift it. It's quite heavy, right? Yeah, it is. Yeah, so you really feel that you win a prize, which is essentially, essentially. It's really heavy. Amazing. And last year was the 25th time that we did this. Really? I didn't know that. So we've done it for quite a long time. For ecommerce? Ecommerce award was, you know, we celebrated the 25th anniversary. So this year is going to be the 26th, or rather next year. Wow, that's impressive. Yeah. So it's been around for a while. I also got to hear what's up with the cup. Yep. Or the mug there. I guess, I don't know, on the camera. See, same thing? Christmas gift for everybody in the department last year. I see. So we're quite fond of this. We think it's good. It's been like this for, I think, about 10, 15 years. I mean, in this format. Before that, it looked different. But we've settled on this one. That's nice. We like us. Just a cup that indicates that we are forever deeply involved in and passionate about ecommerce. ### 1:53 — The State of Danish Ecommerce *A discussion on the growth of the Danish ecommerce market, its ranking in the EU, and the resilience of local businesses against global competition.* Oh, that is beautiful. What a great way to start today. I wanted to hear your thoughts on sort of the overall landscape for ecommerce in Denmark and beyond as well. You know, ecommerce businesses have been through COVID. They've been through fighting with Chinese marketplaces, with Temu and so forth. What's going on now when you discuss sort of the status of ecommerce with the businesses running it? Well, first off, I brought this too. Yes. Which is the ecommerce report on the Danish consumers. We asked 14,000 Danish consumers throughout the year about their preferences, their behavior, their own predictions towards ecommerce. And as you can probably tell, there's a hundred pages in this. So, it does tell us something about the temperature of Danish ecommerce from the consumer point of view. And this for sure tells us that we are in a good state in Denmark. We just for the first time, first half of 2026, crossed a revenue of a hundred billion Danish kroner. And just, you know, rewinding 10 years to 2016, the total revenue of the year was a hundred billion. So, we've doubled in over 10 years, which is, you know, the revenue online. And just to put that into perspective beyond the borders of Denmark, ecommerce Europe, which is the business organization that we as a business organization is part of within Europe, just published their 2026 report, half year report. And Denmark is the number one country in the EU in terms of per capita ecommerce spend. And the next, the next, ### 3:43 — Consumer Behavior Insights *Analysis of a report on Danish consumers, highlighting that convenience and selection are more important drivers for online shopping than price.* the follow up is Estonia. Yeah. So, so, so we are in, we are in a good shape. And I'd say that from the talk I have with members, I also see this to be true, given all the things that you said, interpretive geopolitical disturbances. And is Temu, Shein, are they still a factor? They are. But I think that what the Danish ecommerce business has, has demonstrated once again, is their resilience. They're, they're never giving up, always finding if you can't go through something, you go around it. Right. So we've, we always, we find, we find a way. I, the one thing I do need to, to add to this is that we have never as a market been targeted by Amazon, right? So Amazon is a big player in, in almost all of the other European markets, has never been in Denmark. Not going too much into that. I do, I do realize that we are a small market, 6 million people. There are more people in greater Hamburg than in Denmark. So, you know, looking from the US, you know, Denmark is just a small country. What that has enabled us to do is to create, create a strong ecosystem of businesses. So we are, you know, very well suited to, to combat the, whatever competition hits us. And competition is a good thing. We, we compete within Denmark that increases overall strength. ### 5:17 — Localization and the Chamber's Role *Karsten discusses the effectiveness of localization by international brands and explains the mission of the Danish Chamber of Commerce.* And we, we, we welcome competition from abroad also. Of course, it needs to be on a level playing field, which is where Temu and Shein is lacking somewhat. Not, let's not go into, to details around that. But does that mean that, I've read the report. It's super interesting. But does that mean that we're number one in, in all of Europe when it comes to e-commerce? That's a reason to be proud in some ways as a sort of technology space and, and for all of the people actually running businesses online in Denmark. But does that mean that people are sort of becoming, you know, maybe not lazy, but complacent? Or is there a real sort of drive forward when you speak to a company? For sure the latter. For sure the latter. I think that's, that's been a characteristic of the business, you know, ever since I entered it, which was in the last millennium. Been working with, with the internet. I wouldn't say ecommerce because you couldn't actually buy anything online back then, but in 1996. And I, personally, I went into this out of curiosity. New technology, lots of opportunities. I think lots of people did that for the same reasons back then. And I think that curiosity has some, has, for some reason stayed within the business. So I still feel that curiosity. Always, you know, curious, can we do things better? Even though, which I think that the, that the recent, you know, survey from, from ecommerce europe where we are number one. We're a very mature business. So you could argue that. Why, why aren't we lazy? We're doing really well, right? I think, no, you're not lazy. We're, we're curious and we want to fine tune things, right? There's an eager, there's a, there's a drive to fine tune things. Yeah. But what is the, I mean, they got through COVID. They got through fighting with the Chinese marketplaces and, and they're, they're not getting complacent. No. But what's their problem right now then? What are they sort of fighting with now or, or really sort of pushing towards now? Yeah. I think for sure, Temu and Shein, we're fighting them still. And again, this has to do with the level of playing field. If they were, you know, playing by the same rules, ### 7:38 — EU Challenges and Entrepreneurial Mindset *A look at the structural and cultural differences between the EU and the US/China regarding tech unicorns and funding.* I wouldn't have an issue. We can learn lots of things from the Chinese for sure. But it is an issue because there is not a level playing field. Other than that, I think that, that challenges would probably be more in the sense of, or related to AI as in technology. It's a vastly, the speed of which AI improves is through the roof, right? And for sure, successful businesses now and in the future need to adopt AI where it's relevant for them. That for sure is somewhere where they are, I wouldn't say struggling right now, because I don't think that they are struggling. But they focus on how can we, how can we make sure that we leverage the possibilities of this new technology so as to not lose competitiveness towards, you know, European competitors or worldwide competitors. Yeah, I think, I think we're seeing that from a, from a software maker's point of view as well, that there is almost sort of an explosion of creativity in how you use AI. So, and I, we definitely see that with our e -commerce clients all the time as well, that there's super eager to figure out how can they take advantage of it in, in really, really creative ways. So that I can, we, we see that from our vantage point as well. But if we lift the perspective again, what, what's important in that report to you? What's important for me in this report is I could, I could do lots of deep dives, but if I were to start off with just one, it is that there is, there's a, let's call it a, a misconception that people purchase online because this is where they can get goods the cheapest. We actually asked the Danish consumers, right? We asked them the last time you did an online purchase, why did you do that? We grouped those answers into three buckets. One is convenience. ### 9:40 — Success and Failure Patterns *Insights into why some ecommerce businesses succeed through agility and omnichannel presence while others fail due to rigid assumptions.* You know, I did this because it was the easiest. I could do it in the comfort, the comfort of my own couch. I could do that three in the morning. The second is selection. I purchased this online because, you know, I had all the goods in the world at my disposal. And the last one is price. And the reason why I mentioned them in this priority is because that's actually the priority that the consumers answer, right? So 34% said that the last time they purchased something online, they did it because of convenience. They did it because it was the easiest option for them, right? It suited their need, whether it were, you know, late in the evening, whether it was because they only had two minutes. I wouldn't know, but convenience. And secondly, selection. And then on third place is price, which was 24%. So it's quite a significant span. So, again, I'm not saying price is not important. For sure it's important. But I think it's a misconception that it's the most important reason why people purchase something online. So this is one of the insights that I highlight from this survey. Again, this is the general public. So I always tell people double-click the numbers, right? Like, dive into your specific business, your specific target group, because, you know, the general numbers might look different. But from a general perspective, this is true. People do not purchase things online primarily because they think they can get it at the cheapest price. One thing, something a bit different from the report that I really loved about it was the fact that you have found that many people in this country think that foreign shops are actually Danish. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I thought that was just an interesting finding, and I would never have guessed, to be honest. But tell me more about that. I think actually, I mean, being a Danish business organization, right, I would love for the Danish consumers to know 10 out of 10 times whether a company was Danish or not. However, I think this is because, and this is also something Danish companies are very good at, international players are very good at localizing. They make it appear as if, you know, this is a Danish shop. Everything's in Danish. There's a Danish phone number. You know, if you wouldn't know, you wouldn't know, right? So, in that respect, I'm not as concerned because I know for a fact that Danish companies are always, they're also good at that. Again, we are a small market, right? Yeah. As I said before, 6 million people, it's a small market. What are the examples in it? It's like Boozt and Zalando? Yeah, yeah. ### 12:23 — The Fragmented Customer Journey *Exploring how inspiration online often leads to offline purchases and the importance of meeting customers across all touchpoints.* H&M. I mean, you know, where we say, ah, everybody should know. So, a lot of those, you know, you think, wow, how can they answer wrong? But, yeah, again, it's a curiosity. But, again, I take the angle that it's more an appreciation of the localization work done by these stores rather than its, you know, incompetency on behalf of the Danish consumers. They are not stupid. How should they know better? Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. I completely forgot to just introduce you, but you can introduce yourself. Thank you. And just talk to us about who you are, what you do, how come you are here now, and what your sort of ambitions in life are. Oh, how many minutes do I have? You've got plenty. We've got plenty. Okay. So, my name is Carsten. I am the VP of Digital Commerce within the Danish Chamber of Commerce, which, for reference, is not a governmental organization. We're a private institution. But we're a business organization with 18,000 members in Denmark, 400 employees. We have an office in Copenhagen, where we are right now. Have a office* in Aarhus, which is, you know, I'm often quoted for saying that Aarhus is the e-commerce capital of Denmark. I think it is. Lots of good e-commerce companies, got lots of good agencies and vendors in Aarhus. Then we have an office in Brussels. We are a business organization, so lobbyism is part of what we do. Since most of the laws and regulations that hits us in Denmark come from the EU, we need a presence in Brussels. And then we have an office in the US also. And as I briefly touched upon earlier, I've been working with the internet since 1996, so hitting like a 30-year anniversary now. I like to say that I've been working with the internet since the last millennium because it sounds as if I've been working with it forever. For young people that, you know, 1996 for sure seems as if it's forever. I've been with the business organization for approaching seven years, I think. And aspirations in life, or rather, what do we do for our members within the digital, my department? And so, our sort of, our raison d'etre is that we should, in dialogue with our members, make sure that they make informed decisions. Right? ### 15:05 — Relevance vs. Personalization *A deep dive into why 'relevance' is a better goal than 'personalization' to avoid creepiness and provide genuine customer service.* So, the reason we do that is by doing reports like this. We do webinars, we do conferences, we do award shows. And again, if I were to touch upon this, the reason why we do the e-commerce award show, which is actually without comparison to other than it being the business honoring the business, it's like the Oscars. Right? So, it's a business honoring the business. We only facilitate this. So we don't look at whether any of the nominees or finalists are members of the Danish Chamber of Commerce. We don't. And the reason why we do it is because we firmly believe that if we can put five companies in the final of this, we had 1,600 companies entering into the competition last year. If we could put five companies in each of the 10 different categories, then we have five companies that you could look at if you aspire to be the best business. If your company wants to be good at selling abroad. Right? Yeah. You have a category for that. You can look at the finalists saying, oh, so these are the companies that the rest of the business put here, what can I learn from them? Right? So, the reason we do it is because we firmly believe that if we put ... It's like a lighthouse. Right? If we put lighthouse that's out there that you could look upon in the inspired art, we will lift all of the Danish business society. Right? That makes sense. I'm used to saying this in Danish. Yeah. No, no. It does. It does make sense. Yeah. So, that's the reason why we do this. And again, not being humble, of course. Again, taking back to the survey from e-commerce users, Denmark being the country within EU where the citizens use most of their spend online. I think ... I'd like to think that we've played a small part in that. Yeah. I mean, I can see why we should be proud of that. But at the same time, we also discussed that effect of some people in Denmark thinking that Swedish businesses are actually local Danish businesses. And you've been following this industry now for a really long time. Should we have had businesses of their size that our neighbors have in Sweden? Or did ... I mean, yes, we have sort of saturated e-commerce all throughout the population in many ways. But could something have been done differently where we would have even greater success in e-commerce if you sort of look back 10 years until where we are today? I think to answer that, I would probably take a step back saying I think that for the EU, not in any way neglecting that there are big e-commerce companies in Sweden. I think that within the EU, none of big tech was born in the EU and are in the EU. Right? Sure. Right. So I think we have an EU issue here. And I think that it's not because we don't have smart people. There are smart people all over the globe. So no part of the world is smarter than the other. That goes for Europe also. So I think very much this is a matter of mentality. Right? I think there's a more entrepreneurial mentality in the US for instance, and seems also in China. We should work on that within the EU. And also in terms of funding. It seems as if it's easier to get funding outside of EU. And I know that a lot of businesses that were either unicorns or aspiring to become unicorns left for the US to really fulfill their potential. That's bad, right? They should have been able to fulfill their potential within the EU. Does this have anything to do with the EU over-regulating? ### 19:31 — The Ecommerce Summit and AI *Details about the upcoming conference, the 'Full Steam Ahead' theme, and the practical application of AI in email marketing.* It might. But I think rather than coming with a solution, I think we need to acknowledge that there is an issue or a problem or something that needs to be fixed here. And it's a common problem, right? Yeah. Within AI, just to come with a very contemporary example, we have Mistral in France. Other than that, every company that's anything within the AI is either American or Chinese. Right. So that needs to be fixed. I'm not the one to come with solutions. I'm just raising my hand saying, we have an issue. We need to address it. I think that makes sense. In the startup world and also the scale-up world, both for software businesses and for e-commerce businesses, I think this has been the case in Denmark for a very long time. So what are you... I mean, I gave you a point about the structural differences comparing to US and EU or China and the cultural and the mindset like you talked about. So what do you do as a business organization to sort of improve that situation, not just right here and now, but also looking forward to like 2030? Yeah. I... What we do is, there has been some regulations that has made this difficult. There was something about sharing stocks and you... Yeah. Not going too much into that. But there was an issue if you were a startup and you sort of paid some of your employees with stocks that they would be taxed on the future value of these stocks, even though, you know, they hadn't made a sense. That law, we were at least one of the instruments that had that changed. So we've changed that. So that's something that we've done. What we also do is we, especially within our organization, we are very aware that we need to be very present and be valuable to the startup community. Because this is where sort of, this is where the next unicorn is born, right? So we do whatever we can to make sure that they get all the help that they can get. And of course, we do tell them that, you know, we would appreciate it that if somebody came with a big bag of money saying that you need to relocate to the US, please do rethink whether this is where... Is this good for your business and is it good for, again, your country in the long term? Because I, again, lots of entrepreneurs moved to the US. I know of quite a few that came back because we do have a good society here. This is where you want to raise kids. This is where crime is low. This is where everything is tight needy. The system works, right? Trains run, sometimes a little bit late, but on a whole, the society works. Right? So I'm finding it a little bit... I think what we should do as a country, in Denmark in particular, is we should market Denmark as a place that you would want to work. Right? So we can attract rather than... Because... Yeah. So we could attract, you know, people that can help elevate Danish businesses to Denmark rather than the other way around. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Did that make sense? Yeah, it really does. ### 23:00 — Customer Loyalty and Retention *Discussing the challenges of repeat business during Black Friday and the high value of customer lifetime value in a small market.* Okay. It really does. And I would love to see that happen for sure. I mean, I've been working mostly in Denmark a little bit, in Switzerland and in the US. And the differences are really quite profound, right? And I certainly have a good share of friends in the US that also chose to stay there for a very long time because of what you just mentioned with the amount of funding available and sort of the whole... And I don't blame... ...scene and network. I do not blame startups. No. I mean, it's a business, right? So you follow the money. Yeah. All we're doing is, you know, we're asking them to think twice. Yeah. Because often, you know, it turns out that there are other options. And you can challenge. You can challenge the, you know, the venture capitalists, right? Sure. Or the seed... You can challenge them, say, yeah, you know, you can... We would like to stay. But we would like to stay. Yeah. I mean, you're free to say that. Yeah, I think that makes sense. I wanted to talk to you about sort of the kinds of dialogues you have with member companies running e-commerce. If you look at... If you look sort of back a little bit and sort of try to spot the patterns between the successes and the failures, what are sort of traits of the real success stories and also the failures that you are now sort of able to see? Yeah. Yeah. I'd like to give you my view on that. It's going to be anecdotal, of course. So, for sure, it's not going to be a recipe, right? No. But I think one thing that strikes me is that the businesses that has realized that e-commerce is but one channel, right? And it's not necessarily the only channel. And that if you want to build a successful business, you need to be where the customers are. So, if the customers are online, be online. If the customers want a physical presence, be there also. So, some of the successful businesses we have now that have ventured from being, you know, having only a physical presence to also having an online presence. Lots of examples of that. But there are also examples of pure players, right? Businesses that started online but now has physical stores, right? So, I think realizing that you need to be where the customer is and that a physical presence can give something to the customer either journey or experience that online can't, at least yet. You need to realize that, right? Yeah. So, you need to be where the customers want you to be. And I think also what plays into this is that the customer journey has been prolonged over the years and has been in this fragment in them. So, now each of the contact points are not necessarily all digital. They can be digital and physical. For instance, one thing which is in the report is that we ask the Danes, do you follow anybody on social media that you know are trying to sell you something? I'm paraphrasing, right? Sure. And 47% says, yes. Yes, we are. Okay. So, that 47%, we ask them, so, have you ever been inspired to buy ### 26:24 — The Role of Technology and AI *How ecommerce businesses adopt technology faster than physical stores and the current trend of AI integration.* something listening to these companies? And 85% says, yes, right? So, not only do they listen to somebody online that tries to sell them something, they also get inspired to buy something online listening to these. I lost the thread. You asked me the question. But I can start. Yes, it's an interesting insight into how this works. No, I get your point that it's, well, I was asking about what are sort of the patterns, successes, failures over the years in e-commerce. And I think what I heard you say was that listening to the customer, sort of observing them in terms of where they are, who they like to trust, for example, to your point about influencers. I remember my point now. My point being that, okay, so, we're here talking about a purely digital channel, right? 47% says they're following somebody on social media. 85% of them says, yeah, I do get from time to time is buy to buy something. We didn't ask them, oh, so do you then purchase this online? And no, actually up to 25% says, no, no, I will make this purchase offline. Right? So, this goes to the customer journey being fragmented. So, even though inspiration came online, it can result in an offline purchase. Right. So, the whole, you know, seeing those two channels as two separate things that people would only, you know, their customer journey would be only in one channel or only in the other channel, that's wrong. Yeah. Right? So, the digital companies are the one that realize that, you know, people will zigzag between these based on need, based on a thousand different things. But you need to be present in both, and you need to meet them as one company, regardless of where they meet you. Yeah. That makes sense. And what about the sort of, I'm sure you must have seen some failures as well. And I don't, I'm not asking you to talk about cases, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on what was it overall that those companies, ### 28:38 — Inspiration and Closing Remarks *Final thoughts on the difference between AI-driven intention and human inspiration, and closing the interview.* as a pattern, didn't quite do right. Right. Yeah. I'd say, again, this is anecdotal, right? Yeah. But I'd say it, I can probably, I can probably put that in either, in two baskets, right? One would be businesses that weren't constantly curious as to whether their assumptions were right. Right. So, you build a business assuming that this is what the customer wants, and then you somehow get blindfolded and you don't see the world around you evolving or listen to customer feedback. Yeah. So, you actually end up trying to sell a product that nobody wants to buy, right? So, a lot of successful companies have, you know, if not 180 pivoted, you know, pivoted quite drastically during their, I mean, during their journey of becoming a successful company. Realizing that our assumptions, either our assumptions were wrong, the world around us changed, so you need to be agile, right? I think that's a characteristic of successful companies, and again, not successful companies are the ones that fail to do that. I think another thing would be that some companies, and, you know, I can, I don't blame anybody, right? But if you think that you're going to build a successful business and you try to build your capacity up too fast, right? Your overhead might be the, your overhead might kill your business before you're, you know, you reach your target in terms of revenue. That, that's killed a lot of businesses also. This is really, you know, that's, that's, that's difficult to strike the right balance, right? You want to be able to follow the demand, but then again, not have, you know, too much capacity so that you are, you're burning your, you're burning your revenue, right? Yeah. So, again, I don't have the, I don't have the, the complete, the complete formula for that, but that for sure is something you need to have, have in mind and, and, and constantly, constantly monitor, right? Yeah, I get your point that the operators that you have met that were sort of able to find that balance or thread that needle that they was, that was sort of part of their, their success. I think that makes a lot of sense. Well, I also wanted to talk about, I've heard you sort of previously say that, well, personalization can be a bit of a difficult word. You talk about relevance instead, which I really like. So let's talk about relevance. Yes. And I think. Thank you. Thank you. I think where we come from, we're obviously obsessed with that as a, as a company, bringing the sort of the, the most relevance into the digital part of the journey as, as, as possible. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. And also sort of from the kinds of conversations you have with, with companies, where are they on that enormous journey towards better relevancy? Yeah. Because we, as vendors, we've been talking about this stuff for like 20 years now. And I know from customers, when I talk to them that they can get pretty damn fed up with vendors preaching about personalization once again. Yeah. I'd love to hear your sort of status on 2026. Where are we now? Yeah. And again, I don't want it to be a war on words for sure. Sure. I think, you know, sometimes when you say a word over time, it accumulates, you know, a presumption with people that might not be beneficial. And I think personalization is one of those. You know, it's ever so, so slowly it's, you know, it's, it has become something where at least some people find it creepy, right? Yeah. I don't want you to know too much about me. That, that's, that's creepy. So I think relevance is a much, much better way to work, to, to use because that is actually what the businesses are trying to achieve. So businesses love their customers, right? They are, you know, the customer is king. It's, that's not just something you say, you know, you really do. And especially in Denmark, being a small market, nobody can create a successful business selling their product, you know, only once to each customer. So you are very dependent on customers coming back, having a good experience so that they can, you know, either give you good reviews or talk good about you, right? Be ambassadors, right? Yeah. So you want to be relevant. Be relevant. Uh, and I think that is, that is, that is, I mean, nobody, nobody gets spooked about, you know, you trying to be relevant. Again, if you go down into, if you go to your local pizzeria and he says, hi, Rasmus. Yeah. Number 12 extra pepperoni. Right. He didn't ask for your consent. Right. But he's giving you a good experience. Right. Right. So that's good customer service. That's, that's what everybody's trying to achieve. You want to give them good customer service. So if I know anything about you and if you will let me know something about you, I can be much more relevant. Right. So again, I don't, I've never, I completely understand why we needed to GDPR. We need a level playing field for sure. Uh, as a citizen within the EU, my data is my data. I need to have complete autonomy over my data. Nobody else should have that punctuation. Right. That being said, our members, you know, they, of course there are, you know, there are examples, there are examples, uh, of, of people misusing data, but those are not the general picture. Right. And those are actually the exception to the rule, at least the way I see it. And in the dialogue I have with our, with our members. Right. Right. So most businesses, they want to get to know their customers so that they can be more relevant. They want to give you a better experience. Right. And that goes with ads also. Right. I want to present ads that are relevant for you. Yeah. I don't, I don't want to, to, to, to waste your time. And I don't, as a business, I don't want to waste your time. And as a business, I don't want to waste my money showing ads to you that are not relevant for you. Right. Uh, so I think, I think relevance is, has been very important, is very important and will continue to be very important. Yeah. It's good customer service to know your customers. It's always been, this is a virtue of doing businesses and, and has been, you know, probably for more than a thousand years. That won't go away. No, I think we, we're so, where I come from, we're so obsessed with sort of extracting the purchasing patterns based on the particular product. And we're so focused on looking at the data of the product instead of the shopper. Mm-hmm . And I, I, I find it infinitely fascinating how much you can sort of derive from that or sort of see the, the, the purchasing patterns. And then I think more and more, that's what we're seeing at least, that more and more businesses are getting way more mature, way more advanced at using sort of data that isn't tied to the individual, but sort of looking at the, the aggregate purchasing patterns and then using that to, to. Exactly. I was just about to say personalized, but. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, that's fine. That's fine. That's not a word, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but I like, I'd like to follow you on, on that. I think, I think there is a sort of a good, important difference between them. But, but what I mean is that I, some of our customers are getting super good at creating extremely personalized, hyper relevant touch points in the journey of buying anything basically because of, you know, that sort of aggregate data that we can see the, the patterns. Apparently human beings are not so different if you, if you scale the data up and look at what you typically buy in succession and or together with and what day of the week and all of that. Is that, is that on the agenda for, for the, the companies you talk to? Yes, it most certainly is. I mean, they, they are on a constant, let's say hunt to be as relevant as possible. Yeah. For sure. Again, the customer's king, you would, you want to serve them the best way possible because that increases the likelihood of them coming back or, and or becoming good ambassadors for you. And again, as I'm speaking of consent, consent is, is, is probably one of the most valuable things you can have in e-commerce right now. So businesses, all the businesses I talk to, they value this as gold, right? So they do not want to compromise your consent. If you give them consent to, to, to learn something about you, I mean, they value that for sure. They, they want to treasure that because it's something very, very valuable. Yeah. So that, that's, that's, that's, and again, they do that to become as relevant as possible, to give you as a customer the best service possible. Yeah. I think, yep. I wanted to talk about the conference as well. Yes. Yes. Which is a nice segue because you're going to talk about, let's call it hyper relevance, right? Yes. It might be, it might be listed as a hyper-personalization in the agenda. But in the end, it's just relevant to the, to the shopper. Yes. That is very true. Yeah. Um, so, uh, I want to hear about sort of this year. Well, what's up and down with the conference? Um, uh, what has changed if, if anything? And why is this such an important event in Denmark? Yeah. Well, to start off with the first or yeah, the last thing, it's important again, for many of the same reasons as with the e-commerce awards, this is where we gather Danish e-commerce business. We have 2000 people coming at the conference. Uh, there are 42 talks, uh, amounting to six simultaneous stages. Uh, so, I mean, lots of content, lots of good, uh, vendors, uh, like yourself present. So if you want to vet the business in terms of now your business being email marketing, if you want to vet different vendors within email marketing, the e-commerce, the conference is the perfect way to do it. Everybody's there. Right. Um, as, as to the agenda, uh, we have an overall theme this year, which is translates into full steam ahead. Uh, given the fact that this, this is something that, that, that we settled upon right around, you know, the change of the year, it's, uh, you know, I'm happy that it, that we can actually look at the numbers and see that we are in a good place, a good place now. And so we can still say, yeah, you know, the Danish e-commerce business as a, as a whole is full steam ahead. Uh, as for the different agendas that are being touched upon, uh, we have customer experience, uh, we have digital marketing, we have AI, we have logistics, uh, we have mobile first, uh, which is, uh, this is the first year that we have that as a specific topic. Uh, and if I, if I were to touch, uh, ever so briefly on that, uh, it's because e-commerce, uh, analysis shows that summer of 2022 was when, you know, more Danes actually made their last purchase online on their mobile phone than on their, on their laptop. Uh, and we want to make sure that Danish businesses, uh, know how to cater for that because, uh, the, the, the, the, the mobile phone is, it's not just a small computer, right? It's used in a different context. So you need to, you need to, you need to take, to make, to take that into consideration. Uh, I'm, I'm super happy. AI, of course, is on the agenda, uh, also not as much as AI, but what can AI do for us? Uh, so it's a means to an end, uh, which I'm very happy about, which is, that's the way it should be. AI is a tool. We need to know how to use it. Uh, for your talk in particular, which is email marketing, uh, using the powers of AI to, to make, uh, hyper relevant emails, uh, I think it's actually, I, I like that a lot, uh, because it's taking something completely new and something that was there when I started, uh, in, in e-commerce in 1996, I had an email address, right? So I think an important, an important lesson to be learned by that is that you should focus on what changes, but you need to also focus on what doesn't change. And I'm fairly confident that for most, uh, most businesses, email marketing is one of their most profitable, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, yeah, chains of, uh, revenue, right? Yeah. And you can control it yourself. You're not, you're not dependent on click prices and ad spend going up and down. Uh, I'm, I'm fairly confident most businesses will, will, will agree to that. So, I mean, I think yours is sort of connecting, you know, two ends of, of this journey into one. Um, yeah. So I'm looking very much forward to that. Yeah. I, I, I certainly don't think we have a single customer who don't, who does not treat email marketing as a very important challenge to them. So I think you're right about that. And, and Slack did not manage to kill email. No, it didn't. It seems either. Right. Um, clearly so, um, something, something slightly sort of, um, relevant to what we've been talking about, um, several times here. There has been a bit of a thread here around loyalty in e-commerce. And I, I think that's such a fascinating topic. So I want to dive deeper into that. We, we just, um, at Hello Retail, we just ran our Black Friday numbers were 2025, 24, 23, and sort of looked at it as a whole to try and see the, the patterns over a longer period of time. Um, and one thing that really stood out to me from, from last year's 2025 data was that only 4% in the Black Friday period, this is not only Danish data, by the way, to be clear on that, but European, um, uh, 4%, uh, shopping in the Black Friday period, um, had also shopped the year before. Okay. So number of repeat customer was 4%. 4%. Across all of your customers. Across all customers, all countries. So what that obviously sort of translates into a massive retention opportunity, uh, there's so much more you can do with loyalty to keep, uh, people coming, coming back. And I know Black Friday is obviously a special period, uh, but there is still so much you can do to get them to, to return. And of course, every single one of our customers will try everything to, to get repeat, um, uh, buyers. But from the vantage point of, of the business organization you come from and the members you talk to, what, what does that look like right now with loyalty? Oh, exactly. Yeah. As I said, you know, before we were in a very small market. So there's nobody making a successful business, just, you know, selling their product once to just one customer. They need to do repeat sales. It's for sure something that's important. Uh, also, you know, the cost of acquisition is high of that in itself, uh, means that you need to look at customer lifetime value to sort of justify a high customer acquisition cost. That being said, um, actually the e-commerce report shows that, that, that you, you, the Danish customers online, uh, uh, loyal or that's at least what I derive from it because we asked them the last time you made a purchase online, was this the first time, uh, or was it, was it somewhere where you had purchased before? And 74% says, yeah, I, I, you know, I'd made a purchase at that same store before, right? So what that tells me is that, uh, that can only happen if they'd had a good experience the first time, right? If for some reason, you know, either the quality or, you know, whatever was promised at the time of purchase, you know, wasn't fulfilled, likelihood for you going back would not be very high. Uh, that of course does not translate very well to your 4%. Uh, again, I'm not an expert, but, but I think that that would probably be very much due to the fact that Black Friday is a Bargain Hunter, you know, that's Bargain Hunter season, right? So you target price and that's it. And that's it. So if, if, if you, if you can't get the, your loyalty is probably at its lowest, you know, throughout the year. Yeah. Yeah. So, but I use that number, the 73% saying that loyalty is for sure something you can work on online because again, speaking of misconceptions, I think it's a misconception that loyalty online is less because you do have, you know, you can purchase at any store throughout the world, right? So why should you purchase at the one that you purchased before? Well, I'm not the one saying why that happens, but I can just say, I can just say that numbers show that that's what the Danes do. Yeah. Right. So give them good service, live up to your promise and they will come back. Uh, and it is important. Yeah. I think it must, I don't have the data on this, but I think it must have changed as well. Right. Because as soon as you have had as a shopper, as soon as you've had your first three really bad experiences, then obviously you are going to start slowly sort of focus more on the shops, you know, will provide a good experience. Especially online. I mean, if this was in the physical world and you had like one grocery store really close to you and the other one was far, far ahead. I mean, yeah. A lot should, I mean, they should really treat you bad if you were to go the extra two miles for the other grocery store. But online, if they treat you bad, I mean, it's only one click away. I mean, the distance is comparable. Yeah. So I think also, you know, in that light, loyalty is something that you really have to work hard for online. It doesn't come easy, right? Because you're not, you don't have like physical proximity as one of the things creating loyalty. You know, you don't have that. Brand recognition, very much so. We can see that 59% of the days they say, this is in the report also, that they often purchase, they often buy in the same shop offline and online, right? So there's a channel mix here where based on the situation you're in as a consumer, let's take myself as an example. If I needed something from the drugstore, right? And I was okay by having it tomorrow. Yeah. I could go online. That's fine. You know, it would be over like this. If I need it now, I would swing by the drugstore on my way home from work, right? I'm not thinking, and my first objective was not to make an online purchase or an offline purchase. It was based on my need, right? So if I can wait until tomorrow, you know, my investment in time will be very small. So I do that. If I want it now, I'm willing to invest a little more in time to sort of fulfill that need. Right? Did that make sense? Yeah, it does. That makes a lot of sense, I think. And there's definitely something to learn from that, I believe. And with the channel mix or what's still called omnichannel, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Many years later. So I think that's a great point. I wanted to ask you one other question about sort of the role of technology for e-commerce companies. I come from a technology world, so I, you know, we are all obsessed with our own makings, right? And we get so excited about new features and new products and the pain we can relieve and the sort of the value that we can come with through technology. But if you look at e-commerce as a whole, then technology is obviously only one part of the whole game. So how do you see companies in how they understand technology today versus everything else they also need to get right? I think technology has always been important in e-commerce, is very important right now and will also be important. And I think one side effect of that is that e-commerce businesses have always been sort of ahead of the game in terms of adopting new technologies, being bold, being curious, being willing to take risks, calculated risks, of course, whereas I feel that some physical stores have maybe been a little bit more reluctant. I think I was recently a conference in France displaying a lot of the technology being available for your physical store now. And lots of technology is coming and for sure they are adopting it, but I'm still feeling that they are a little bit late to the game. I'm thinking that some of the things they implemented, they could have, I mean, you know, from a technological point of view, this could have been done five years ago. I think within e-commerce, I think there's always been a willingness to experiment. You could also say, you could argue that it's been easier in an e-commerce world, right? You could do a small experiment. If somebody had a piece of technology that they would say, this will increase your conversion rate, for instance. You could do a test. If it lived up to the promise, perfect, let's scale up. In the physical world, I'm well aware that, you know, the investment is a lot higher. And I think, as I said before, the curiosity, I think that's still in the business. So I'm feeling that they are very curious, e-commerce businesses are very curious into looking into what new technology can help, you know, take my business, you know, one step further on whatever journey it is that I'm on. And I think that's especially true within AI. This is not something that I have any numbers on. But I think if you look at the business community as a whole, I'm fairly confident that businesses that has a huge part of their business being digital channels have probably adopted AI to a higher extent than businesses that haven't. Right. And I think this very much goes into the curiosity and that they were raised with new technology being something that you need to evaluate on and not in an everyday basis, but frequently. Right. And I think that's a wonderful way to sort of close up here and start wrapping this conversation up. I think one thing I really take away from this is that sort of the all of those 2000 people that come to the event are basically the ones that are sort of making that number one placement happen. I think there is a good deal of sort of, yeah, let's be really proud about that and gather at the conference, of course, and learning from each other. Like you said, is there anything else you want to share or a book recommendation or anything that we should sort of wrap up with? Yeah. I think one thing would be that with this whole talk of AI, agentic commerce, for sure it's coming. E-commerce reports shows that too. Recent number, February 2026, 45% of the Danes said that they had used AI on their digital customer journey. Right. So for sure it's coming. It was up from 38% in June of last year. Right. Again, it's not, it's not, you know, it's not inclined like this. It's more, you know, steady inclined. And it might be, you know, like this. I don't know. Anyways, this for sure is something you should be observant of, for sure. I know e-commerce businesses are, as I said before, very, very observant in terms of new technologies. I think one thing that you need to not forget on this is that they are very good at transforming AI, you know, like chatGPT They're very good at transforming intention into something that is a recommendation, like a product. I have this intention. What does this translate into like a product? However, before intention is inspiration. Right. So, so don't forget that. I mean, as it is right now, AI doesn't inspire you. Right. It transforms your intention into something that's tangible. Right. So you have something, a vague idea of what it is you want and it can help you say, ah, but then it's this project product that you want. So let's not forget the inspiration part. Did that make sense? It does. I think it's actually also transferable to sort of my world of B2B as well. Right. We, we also need to inspire our customers to try out new things and try out new technology or new approaches and, um, and, and learn from, from others like them. So, um, I think that does make a lot of sense. Um, I want to thank you a lot for, for taking the time to talk to me. Thank you for the invitation. Yeah. Looking forward to seeing you on the 8th of October at the ecommerce Summit. Wonderful. Thank you as much. Thank you. --- ## About Hello Retail Hello Retail is an AI-powered ecommerce personalization platform based in Copenhagen, Denmark. We help online retailers improve search, recommendations, merchandising, email, and retail media through our proprietary Product Intelligence engine. - **Website**: [helloretail.com](https://helloretail.com) - **All Conversations episodes**: [helloretail.com/en/conversations](https://helloretail.com/en/conversations/) - **Demo**: [Book a Demo](https://helloretail.com/en/demo/) - **AI information**: [helloretail.com/en/ai-info](https://helloretail.com/en/ai-info) --- *This content is optimized for LLM consumption.*