Czechia: Alza, Packeta Lockers and a 17.6% AI Adoption Gap

Czechia is the middle case in Central Europe, and the middle case is often the most profitable one to work. Eurostat's 2025 survey puts Czech enterprises at 17.6% adopting any AI — just below the EU average of 19.95%, and above Poland, Hungary and Slovakia, but nowhere near Austria's 29.95%.

That number does not look like a gap. The gap is elsewhere: in the structure of Czech e-commerce, which runs on two marketplaces and a price comparison engine, and in a language that foreign suppliers almost never write well. Alza's buyers are specification-literate, Heureka-trained and deeply sceptical of unverified claims. A generic European ad does not just underperform here; it actively damages trust.

What makes Czech buyers different

Three characteristics shape every creative decision.

Comparison is the default. Heureka drives price and parameter comparison across the market, which means a Czech buyer typically arrives at a product already knowing the price range and the specification list of its competitors. The creative job is not to create desire — it is to differentiate on something the comparison table cannot show: how the product behaves, what it feels like, what the seller does when something goes wrong.

Scepticism is the register. Czech advertising tolerates dry humour and plain statement. It does not tolerate superlatives. "Nejlepší kvalita" — best quality — invites the question of who says so, and a Czech buyer will ask it. Numbers are persuasive; adjectives are not. A video that states 4.8 stars from 2,300 reviews is more convincing than any amount of production polish.

Specificity signals legitimacy. Naming the courier, the pickup point, the warranty length, the return window. A Czech buyer reads specificity as evidence that a real Czech business is behind the listing. Vagueness reads as a foreign operation or a dropshipper, and both get abandoned at checkout.

The platform landscape

The independent e-shop tradition matters more in Czechia than in most of the region. Czech e-commerce grew up on standalone shops before marketplaces dominated, and there is still a large population of brand-led stores with real revenue and no creative capacity. That is the segment where page video and feed ads sell at a better margin than marketplace listings.

The details that expose foreign creative

• Currency format. Koruna amounts use a space thousands separator and "Kč" after the number: 1 299 Kč. A price written 1,299.00 Kč is an immediate tell.
• Payment language. Dobírka — cash on delivery — is still a real expectation for older buyers and smaller towns, and its absence from a checkout-focused ad is conspicuous. Card payment, Apple Pay and Google Pay are standard in cities.
• Delivery expectation. Packeta's Zásilkovna pickup points and Z-BOX lockers are part of daily retail life, alongside Česká pošta, PPL, GLS and DPD. Naming the pickup point is the single highest-value local detail in an ad.
• Language register. Czech copy is understated and often lightly ironic. Translated English enthusiasm reads as an infomercial, and Czech consumers are quick to dismiss it.
• VAT and price presentation. Czech DPH is 21% standard. Consumer prices must be gross, and a B2B invoice must show the tax separately.

What Czech buyers buy

Three products, in order of demand:

Marketplace listing clips. Eight to fifteen seconds, silent-safe, product-first in the first frame, no baked-in price. Bought in batches and refreshed per promotion.

Feed ad variants for independent shops. Ten hooks per product, tested weekly. Czech audiences are small enough that fatigue arrives quickly, so variant count beats production value.

Product page video. Higher margin per asset, slower to sell, and the natural second order after a batch.

What does not sell: brand films, aside from the large advertisers already served by Prague agencies. Czechia is a value-disciplined market, and prestige work is not where the budget is.

Pricing in koruna

Czech buyers think in koruna. Quote in Kč, with a euro equivalent for agency partners.

One useful adjacency: Slovak and Czech are mutually intelligible in practice, which means a Czech master can be re-cut for Slovakia with a separate text and voice layer at a marginal cost. A brand selling into both markets gets two countries for roughly 1.2 times the work, which is a straightforward and truthful upsell.

The route in

Agency-first, brand-second, as elsewhere in the region — with one Czech-specific twist.

Target the agencies with an e-commerce book of business. Prague has a solid bench of digital agencies serving shops that need constant creative. They already own the relationships and the language; what they lack is the throughput to serve clients who want thirty assets a month at a per-asset price.

Produce one real Czech listing video. Not a translated showreel — an actual eight-second demonstration with correct koruna formatting, a named pickup point and a gross price. Send it to three agencies with a per-video price in Kč and euros.

Lead with the comparison problem. Czech buyers arrive price-informed, so the pitch is not "better ads" but "video that shows what the comparison table cannot". That framing is specific to this market and lands immediately with an agency that has heard the opposite pitch a hundred times.

The production method — one footage run, language as a layer, native review before delivery — is in one shoot, five markets. The same model in the neighbouring price bracket is in Poland and CEE, and Hungary covers the market where the language barrier is even steeper.

The Heureka problem: when the video must match the listing

Czechia has a structural feature that most markets do not: a price and parameter comparison engine sitting between the buyer and the shop. Heureka aggregates listings across hundreds of retailers, and the buyer often meets your product in a table of competitors rather than in your store.

That changes the creative brief in four specific ways.

Accuracy outranks beauty. If the video shows a colour, a size or a bundle that does not match the listing parameters, a Czech buyer notices and treats it as a bait listing. The footage has to match the SKU exactly, which means the product master footage is not optional and re-generating the product is never acceptable.

The differentiator has to be invisible to the table. A comparison grid shows price, parameters, rating and delivery — so the creative's job is to show what the grid cannot: how the thing behaves in a hand, what it sounds like, how it opens, whether it feels solid. This is the single strongest argument for product video in Czechia, and it is a better pitch than "more ads".

Ratings are visible to everyone. A product with 4.8 stars and 2,300 reviews is competing with a 4.1-star alternative at a lower price, and the video should reference the rating rather than ignore it. Czech buyers read reviews before they watch video, in that order.

Delivery parameters are part of the table. Since pickup-point delivery and price are compared side by side, an ad that names Zásilkovna and states the delivery window is giving the buyer the two facts they were already checking.

What Czech e-commerce actually buys

The Slovak upsell deserves emphasis because it is unusually clean here. Czech and Slovak are mutually intelligible in practice, so a Czech master needs a separate text and voice layer rather than a new production. A brand selling into both markets gets two countries for roughly 1.2 times the work, which is a truthful and easy sell — and it is the reason a single Czech agency client can be worth more than it first appears.

The calendar

Czech Christmas is unusually important for e-commerce, and the delivery cut-off asset matters more than any brand piece. A clear "order by this date for delivery before Christmas" clip is the highest-return fifteen seconds in the Czech calendar.

The honest assessment

Czechia is not the widest gap in Europe — 17.6% adoption is close to the EU average, and Prague has real agencies. What it offers is a market where the supply of Czech-language video at per-asset prices is genuinely thin, buyers are numerate and respond to evidence, and a neighbouring market comes almost free.

That makes it a second or third market rather than a first one. Enter once the pipeline and the review process exist, and treat the first Czech agency client as the route into both Czechia and Slovakia.