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Selling on Amazon can be tricky. The company’s sheer scale means the key to getting the most out of Amazon as a retailer is the details. That was the major takeaway at Digiday Media’s recent Amazon Strategies event.
ThredUp just announced a new partnership with Gap that would let customers consign their old clothes. It shows the secondhand clothing platform staking it claim as a helpful brand partner for traditional retailers looking for a refresh.
Within the past year, Google has made a significant push to turn itself into more of a shopping destination. But it's also taken steps to encourage more retailers and direct-to-consumer brands to invest in YouTube. In November, YouTube announced that it was extending shopping ads to YouTube's home feed and search results, so that when a user searches for say, Puma shoes, they see an ad with a carousel of suggested products to buy.
Reviews have been on Amazon for decades. But big and small brands alike are noticing more players gaming them. While Amazon claims that it's trying its best to fight the problem, it is only becoming a bigger headache as the e-commerce platform continues to grow.
Reviews have been on Amazon for decades, and so too have fake ones. But as Amazon has become a more dominant e-commerce force, the problem review fraud presents has become more clear. Here is a look at how Amazon has approached its review ecosystem, and how it's led to dark network of bad online actors.
Retailers are now gravitating toward Pinterest’s shopping-friendly features to add another source of e-commerce revenue. The platform has added more social commerce tools in an effort to pitch retailers on how being on the platform can help actual conversions. These include the ability to build custom shopping catalogs, product pins and improved retargeting.
This week, Digiday Media hosted its very first Amazon Strategies event. There, retailers, brands, marketers and others got into the nitty gritty details of what keeps them up at night. Competition -- both from others and Amazon itself -- was a frequent topic, as were data difficulties and problems keeping a clean brand presence. Here are some of the top observations overheard at the event.
Pinterest wants to be “more shoppable than ever” thanks to customizable retail features like shopping catalogs and promoted pins.
Tik Tok has managed to attract large retailers in just two years. From Old Navy to Walmart to supermarket giant Krogers’ shoppable campaign, everyone from big box and smaller retailers have hopped on the Tik Tok wagon.
Google is phasing out support for third-party cookies within two years, a move that has major implications for how some retailers advertise -- and may also be a boon for retail media operations at major companies like Target and Walmart. Third-party cookies are pieces of code that track what a user or their device does across different websites, and help retailers figure out when to serve an ad to various groups of users. They're most commonly used for ad retargeting and behavioral advertising. As such, as Google prepares to phase out support for third-party cookies, it could limit the number of ways retailers can target and advertise to users across the web.
During the Holiday season, Amazon abruptly announced that it wouldn't let merchants use FedEx to fulfill Prime orders. Now, the e-commerce giant has made an about face and let the parcel service back in. What's behind these moves is a complicated ecosystem of logistics competition and customer expectations.
Alibaba is making a big push to U.S. retailers. While much of its pitch is focused on entering the large Chinese market, Alibaba is also making one thing crystal clear: It is not Amazon has no plans to become like it. At a recent panel with Allbirds, the e-commerce company talked about this. Christina Fontana, Alibaba's Tmall's head of fashion and luxury, said the company is "building technology platforms and services that allow brands to speak directly to their consumers." She highlighted the data the company shares with companies selling on the platform, as well as the various opportunities to promote products -- be it via live-streaming or during events like Singles Day. Her pitch was clear: China is "the largest retail market in the world," she said, and Alibaba is an obvious way to access that population. It currently exceeds 755 million active users.
After years of having its lunch eaten by Amazon, eBay is trying to fend off new competition from a new crop of secondhand marketplaces. Startups from StockX to theRealReal to ThredUp have been able to grow quickly by focusing on specific verticals like luxury handbags or sneakers in which there's historically been a lot of demand for resale, as well as by promising to authenticate goods before shipping them to buyers as a way to win over customers who have been skeptical of buying secondhand goods over the internet. Now, eBay is trying to take a page or two from their playbook.
Google is slowly but surely expanding its commerce features. Whether or not companies want to participate, there's a good chance Google will try to insert itself into the transaction. The question remains: How far will Google go and what will the collateral damage be?
As brick-and-mortar businesses struggle to stay competitive in the Amazon era, a retail revolution has occurred.
The service, which will operate separately from Elliot, will allow brands to have customers shop products straight from an interactive live stream. The live shopping network is meant to give viewers to ask questions about curated items' fit and texture, among other details, before clicking checkout on products.
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