Egypt - Cairo - Dec ( 10th)

The E-commerce Berlin Expo is the largest pure-play B2B ecommerce event in Germany, gathering operators, brands and technology leaders from across Europe. Their tenth edition takes place on February 17 and 18, 2026 at Messe Berlin and is expected to welcome more than fourteen thousand attendees.

Our ecosystem carries strong logos, but what matters most is the community behind them.

Shoppers behave with more consistency and far less logic than most leaders assume. In our 86th Expert Session, Vesna Fuiorea revealed the real forces that shape in-store decisions and why companies continue to misread them.

This week, our community sat with Vesna Fuiorea, a senior operator with twenty five years across FMCG, retail and shopper psychology. Her approach is rare: she combines the behavioral science of Kahneman and Byron Sharp with the practical discipline of someone who has built categories, shaped in-store strategy and negotiated with retailers for decades.

Her latest research, drawn from one thousand Romanian shoppers, exposes the tension between how companies think people shop and how people actually behave. Vesna opened with a simple truth that framed the entire discussion:

Vesna’s findings show that shoppers never enter stores thinking about brands.

They enter with a mission, and everything that happens next is dictated by visibility, clarity and friction. “Shoppers do not arrive thinking about your brand.

They arrive with a mission,” she said, and her data confirmed it across categories. OECD studies reinforce this pattern.

Markets with strong fresh food culture, such as Italy and Greece, maintain some of the lowest online grocery penetration in Europe, proving that digital adoption is shaped by culture, not just infrastructure.

Her analysis of promotions was equally sharp.

Many brands have turned promos into a reflex, even though, as Vesna put it,

McKinsey confirms that in mature FMCG markets, more than 50 percent of discounted sales would have occurred without the promotion, revealing how deeply companies underestimate their own elasticity.

One of the most non obvious insights emerged when she explained how Gen Z behavior is fragmenting internally. Men and women within the same cohort respond to different triggers and navigate stores differently, which contradicts the idea that generational cohorts behave uniformly.

Her perspective on secondary placements was equally revealing. “Secondary placements are not posters. They are triggers,” she said, explaining how shoppers use them for navigation, novelty and efficiency.

Her research confirms what Kantar observed globally: most shoppers rely on visual shortcuts to make up to 70 percent of in-store decisions.

Finally, Vesna dismantled the myth of separate online and offline personas.

This reframes omnichannel strategy not as channel integration but as behavioral continuity.

This session reinforces why our community exists.

Senior operators want clarity, global pattern recognition and grounded insight that cuts through noise.

Vesna delivered exactly that.

Her work helps leaders from forty eight countries understand the behavioral truths behind category strategy, merchandising and commercial execution.

For EVOLVE members navigating transitions, new markets and advisory paths, this level of thinking becomes a competitive advantage.

EVOLVE continues to grow because we create the conditions where senior talent can learn from each other, build visibility, and translate experience into meaningful opportunities. Sessions like this strengthen our collective and reflect our mission:

to become the most trusted and global house of senior commerce experts, providing the depth and context that modern leadership requires.

Curated. Personable. Global.

If you’d like to learn more how to partner with us during 2026 please email us at [email protected] or [email protected]

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