Those are some of the conclusions from a recent holiday spending survey of more than 12,000 consumers in a dozen countries by Cisco AppDynamics, a subsidiary of San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco Systems Inc.

“Consumers around the world are planning to do more of their holiday season shopping online than ever before this year,” James Harvey, executive chief technology officer for Cisco AppDynamics’ Europe, Middle East and Africa region, said in a statement. “On average, consumers expect that 59% of their spending on key shopping dates such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday will be online this year versus in-store, compared to 53% last year.”

With high inflation plaguing much of the world, consumers believe they can find good deals online, especially during big shopping events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, according to Cisco AppDynamics.

“And this year, they are favoring online shopping over in-store as they believe they can make their budgets stretch further (48% of consumers), get more choice (42%), and avoid last-minute panic buying in the shops (31%),” Harvey wrote in a survey summary.

He added that 43% of consumers expect to do more of their holiday shopping online, through applications and digital services, compared to last year, as opposed to only 13% who plan to buy less.

Holiday spending is up for grabs

But online retailers can’t take this favorable environment for granted, according to Harvey. He wrote that the research found “consumer expectations for digital experience continue to rise, and people’s reactions when they encounter poorly performing applications and digital services are getting stronger. 64% of consumers claim that if the applications and digital services they will be using to do their holiday shopping this year fail to perform, it will leave them feeling anxious and angry.”

Shoppers will be quick to act on those feelings, too. “More than half — 58% — of consumers claim that retail brands will have one shot to impress them this holiday season, and if their digital service or application does not perform well, they won’t use it again,” Harvey wrote. In addition, “71% state that if the applications and digital services that they will be using for their holiday shopping fail to perform, they will be more inclined to go back to shopping in-store.”

A key lesson from the survey is that retailers’ IT staffs must be able to closely observe applications and related systems to ensure they are running properly, according to Harvey.

Cisco AppDynamics didn’t release details about the survey methodology, including in which countries it polled consumers and the margin of error. A Cisco EMEA spokesperson did not respond to several inquiries from Digital Commerce 360.

Cisco, which designs and manufactures Internet Protocol-based networking and related products, acquired San Francisco-based AppDynamics Inc.  in 2017 for approximately $3.7 billion. AppDynamics provides application intelligence software and a monitoring platform to help companies improve software and business performance.

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According to new Digital Commerce 360 research, 63% of retailers plan to increase spending on technology and services in 2024. They’re prioritizing conversion and customer experience in the new year, because finding new customers and retaining existing customers are the name of the game. 

Explore Digital Commerce 360’s latest ecommerce trends and investing analysis in our newest 2024 Leading Vendors to the Top 1000 Retailers Report where we review the top 10 vendors across 24 ecommerce categories including Customer Relationship Management, Ecommerce Platforms, Fulfillment Services, Marketing Automation Platforms, and more.  

Technology Providers – This intelligence is for you. Start evaluating your competitors’ plans to find new customers and clients to keep your business growing.

View the table of contents for full details on what’s included in the report.   

Published November 2023

WHAT’S INCLUDED 

The Top 10 Leading Vendors in 24 Ecommerce Categories   

Featured categories include Affiliate Marketing, Content Delivery Network, Content Management Systems, Customer Relationship Management, Ecommerce Platform, Fulfillment Services, Order Management, Payment Processing, Shipping Carrier, Social Media Marketing, Web Hosting/Cloud Services, Website Performance 

Extensive Analysis on Trends in Retailer Investments  

Read through real-life case studies and interviews with large and small retailers alike, including Colgate-Palmolive, Stanley Black & Decker, J. Jill. Walgreen’s, Beekman 1802, UrbanStems, and Polywood who are investing in the future of ecommerce technology and services.  

WHY YOU SHOULD BUY IT 

Digital Commerce 360’s Leading Vendors to the Top 1000 Retailers Report is a valuable tool for anyone looking to understand—and profit from—the ecommerce technology landscape.   

OTHER REPORTS YOU MAY LIKE 

Top 1000 Report

Analyzing North America’s leading online retailers, ranked 1-1,000 by web sales 

Top 1000 Database

Rankings by web sales and performance data on North America’s leading 1,000 online retailers 

Ecommerce Platforms Report

Analysis of the top ecommerce platforms and the retailers that use them 

The post 2024 Leading Vendors to the Top 1000 Retailers Report appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

Meanwhile, gross merchandise volume (GMV), the total value of merchants’ products across Shopify’s systems, increased 22% to $55 billion. Gross profit also grew, increasing 36% to $901 million.

45 retailers in the Top 1000 use Shopify. The Top 1000 is Digital Commerce 360’s database of leading ecommerce retailers in North America. The 45 using Shopify account for a combined $8.30 billion in web sales annually.

In the Next 1000, 74 merchants used Shopify in 2022 and accounted for $1.05 billion in web sales. The Next 1000 ranks the largest retailers after the Top 1000 (1,001 to 2,000) by web sales.

Shopify’s AI tools

Shopify president Harley Finkelstein said in an earnings call with investors that artificial intelligence is for everyone, and its capabilities should be embedded throughout a business.

“We’ve integrated Shopify Magic, our suite of free AI-enabled features across our products and workflows, and merchants are already finding success with unblocking productivity and creativity,” he said.

Shopify Magic enables personalized pages and content generation, he said. It can help craft an About Us page in a merchant’s brand voice or tone, he said.

Changing checkout benefits Shopify earnings

Finkelstein said in the Shopify earnings call that the company launched a new one-page checkout in September. In its first two months, Finkelstein said, it has sped up buyer completion time by an average of four seconds.

In the quarter, Shop Pay facilitated $12 billion in GMV, he said. That’s a 50% year-over-year increase. Since launching in 2017, it has facilitated a cumulative $110 billion in sales.

Finkelstein also said Shopify Checkout has helped its merchant base through Checkout Extensibility, which launched in 2022. Since launch, he said, Shopify has “exponentially expanded its suite of APIs, components and capabilities. It has also seen more than 400 checkout apps in the Shopify App Store that support Checkout Extensibility.

“It is more adaptable, loads faster and converts better, he said. “Designed to handle high volumes, it is ideal for the world’s largest flash sellers like the iconic brand Supreme.”

Shopify-Amazon deal

Shopify also announced a partnership with Amazon during the quarter, giving merchants the choice to offer Buy with Prime directly within their Shopify Checkout. Finkelstein said the app will release “in Shopify’s app ecosystem in the coming weeks.”

“This new app will give U.S. based merchants who use Amazon’s fulfillment network the option to add Buy with Prime into their Shopify Checkout, and all of it will be processed by Shopify Payments,” Finkelstein said.

James Risley, research data manager and senior analyst at Digital Commerce 360, said he doesn’t think the Shopify-Amazon partnership is making all the difference, but it “is a big deal.”

“Not only does it provide Shopify with a strong name to build on in its checkout flow, but it also allows retailers to not have to pick one vendor — Amazon or Shopify — to get the payment networks of each,” Risley said.

174 retailers in the Top 1000 offer Amazon Pay, whereas 130 offer Shop Pay.

Check back for more earnings reports. 

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Happy Returns manages returns for online retailers through kiosks called Return Bars. Customers use Return Bars to send back purchases from online retailers. UPS will acquire the vendor from PayPal, which purchased it in 2021.

“By combining Happy Returns’ easy digital experience and established drop-off points with UPS’s small package network and footprint of close to 5,200 The UPS Store locations, box-free, label-free returns will soon be available at more than 12,000 convenient locations in the U.S,” says UPS CEO Carol Tomes in a statement. 

Happy Returns says it has more than 10,000 locations, many of which are through partnerships with retail chains Ulta, Petco, and Staples. It works with 800 retailers and has grown revenue to 10 times 2020 levels, Happy Returns says.

Happy Returns charges retailers a monthly service fee for handling returns and a per-item fee that varies, depending on the processing work required. Retailers with return kiosks benefit from the increased foot traffic, which can lead to browsing shoppers and potential sales.

“In recent years, the growth of Happy Returns has accelerated, and we’ve built an enterprise-grade solution. This new chapter is a natural next step for Happy Returns and allows us to harness the power of the UPS network to transform the returns industry,” says Happy Returns CEO and co-founder David Sobie.

Returns are a growing part of the retail business

Returns can be costly for retailers. Companies pay an average of $26.50 to process $100 in returned merchandise, The Wall Street Journal reported in May. In 2022, about 16.5% of retail purchases were returned, totaling about $816 billion, according to the National Retail Federation. 

In 2022, 45.7% of retailers in the Top 1000 offered online returns processing to consumers. That’s a slight decrease from 47.4% in 2021. The Top 1000 is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest online retailers in North America.

2023 Top 1000 Report

Analysis of North America’s leading 1,000 online retailers. Includes over 200 charts, rankings by 2022 web sales, benchmarking data, growth analyses by category and merchant type, and a detailed analysis of post-pandemic ecommerce. 

View Details

Consumers have come to expect easy online returns. In a Bizrate Insights and Digital Commerce 360 July survey of 1,017 online shoppers, 52.3% cited free return shipping as one of their top five considerations when making an online purchase. However, relatively few consumers say they’ve used a return kiosk. In the same survey, 5% of respondents said they’d used a Happy Returns kiosk or similar service for a non-Amazon purchase. Another 7.1% said they’d dropped a return off at a retailer like Walgreens, which offers a similar service. 9.7% have returned an online order to a mall-based pickup and return center.

UPS serves more than half the Top 1000

532 online retailers in the Top 1000 use UPS for their fulfillment — either exclusively or in combination with other carriers. 65.6% of Top 1000 sales come from retailers using UPS.

More than half of web sales in the Top 1000 come from merchants using UPS for at least some of their shipments. The cumulative 2022 web sales of Top 1000 retailers using UPS is about $669.98 billion.

However, hundreds of the 532 online retailers using UPS to ship items do not use it exclusively.

75 merchants in the Top 1000 exclusively use UPS for their shipping. Those 75 accounted for $24.97 billion in 2022 web sales.

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The move is timely. It puts the global software company into a broad market push to help businesses facing supply chain challenges capitalize on AI advantages in procurement and supply chain activities. SAP provides widely used business operations software.

“GenAI is being embraced and adopted at a rapid scale, including in procurement,” says Jeffrey Rajamani, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. He covers procurement and sourcing technology and strategy. “It’s good to see that SAP has joined the bandwagon in bringing GenAI innovations in spend management. Sourcing and procurement functions in organizations are being disrupted, as the C-suite is tasking them with more strategic imperatives.”

SAP announced at its Connect Live event in Vienna, Austria, this week that it will soon make available procurement software applications embedded with GenAI to help procurement professionals.

The new SAP GenAI applications will help to:

• More quickly build comprehensive product categories through SAP Ariba Category Management.
• Improve spend management to identify cost-saving opportunities and more efficient purchasing practices through the SAP Spend Control Tower application.
• Expedite how they assess the risk of dealing with new suppliers through SAP Ariba Sourcing, SAP Ariba Contracts and SAP Ariba Buying software as AI helps to uncover suppliers’ reputations related to product quality and delivery service.
• More quickly identify new suppliers that meet their purchasing requirements related to product specifications and other criteria through SAP Ariba Sourcing. SAP recently integrated Ariba Sourcing with Scoutbee Discovery, an AI-powered supplier search application.

Christian Klein, CEO, SAP SE

Last month, SAP announced its release of Joule, a natural-language, generative AI tool it describes as a GenAI copilot. SAP will embed it into its applications for:

• Supply chains
• Procurement
• Customer experience
• Human resources
• Finance

SAP says Joule is designed for “quickly sorting through and contextualizing data from multiple systems to surface smarter insights.”

Joule has almost 300 million enterprise users around the world working regularly with cloud solutions from SAP, says SAP CEO Christian Klein.

And it “has the power to redefine the way businesses — and the people who power them — work,” Klein says.

SAP has room to grow with AI applications

When it launched Joule, SAP noted how a company might use it to check the cause of a sales decline.

“Imagine, for example, a manufacturer asking Joule for help understanding sales performance better. Joule can identify underperforming regions, link to other data sets to reveal a supply chain issue, and automatically connect to the supply chain system to offer potential fixes for the manufacturer’s review.”

Rajamani says SAP is off to a good start with AI-powered send management, which Forrester refers to as “supplier value management” or SVM. But he suggests it has room to grow with AI.

“While SAP seems to have addressed the supplier discovery, spend analytics, risk management and expense management parts of SVM, there are other areas where I think the demand for AI/GenAI has exploded exponentially: contract life cycle management and procure-to-pay,” he says. “It would be good for SAP to think through these important components, too, such as a GenAI bot to negotiate contracts.” (Procure-to-pay software manages and records commerce activity from the point a buyer begins the procurement process through payment.)

SAP conducted its Connect Live event Oct. 9 to 11. It did not immediately return a request for additional comments about its AI plans.

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. paul@digitalcommerce360.com.

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The new B Store ecommerce software module is a headless commerce offering that primary suppliers, including manufacturers and master distributors, can extend to distributors or other channel partners for processing online sales to end customers.

“B Store is the middle ‘B’ in B2B2B, B2B2C and B2B2X business models,” says Tom Flierl, Amla’s chief commercial officer.

He adds that B Store lets manufacturers maintain data control. It covers such critical areas as product data accuracy and brand images.

Znode headless ecommerce platform

As a headless platform, Znode is designed to support multiple customer-facing interfaces. And they integrate via APIs with the Znode ecommerce engine. With B Store, Znode provides a ready-made ecommerce storefront module users can customize on top of Znode’s ecommerce software. In addition, B Store lets the manufacturer or other primary supplier maintain control over their product data and access customer demand information, Flierl says.

Frank Connelly, product manager at Znode, says manufacturers and other product suppliers will be able to set product pricing and discounting ranges for each channel partner’s B Store.

Carlos Manalo, co-CEO of the Chicago-based digital agency Office of Experience, says the B Store module offers valuable “out-of-the-box” ecommerce software. And he says it does so in a flexible headless environment for companies that need to help their channel partners selling through an ecommerce site.

“This functionality allows you to go faster out of the box and gives you the ability to scale without getting painted into a corner,” he says. He adds that use cases include manufacturers that sell through dealers for such categories as uniforms and promotional products.

Znode is available under a single-tenant, software-as-a-service model, with fees based on sales volume and other criteria.

B Store features include:

• The ability of a manufacturer’s channel partner to build out its own self-service ecommerce site.
• Curating product catalogs and customizing price lists.
• Pop-up ecommerce shops that companies can set up for special limited-run or recurring sales events.
• Controlling information on product and category availability.

Znode also plans to introduce this fall the Znode Commerce Portal. It will provide the same online interface for channel partners, sales reps and customers.

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. paul@digitalcommerce360.com.

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The Microsoft Copilot Copyright Commitment will protect customers as long as they’ve “used the guardrails and content filters we have built into our products” Hossein Nowbar, General Counsel, Corporate Legal Affairs and Corporate Secretary at Microsoft, said in a Sept. 7 blog post. Microsoft also pledged to pay related fines or settlements and said it has taken steps to ensure its Copilots respect copyright.

“We believe in standing behind our customers when they use our products,” Nowbar said. “We are charging our commercial customers for our Copilots, and if their use creates legal issues, we should make this our problem rather than our customers’ problem.”

Microsoft ranks No. 88 in the Top 1000. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers.

Microsoft connection to OpenAI and generative AI technology

Generative AI applications scoop up existing content such as art, articles and programming code. They then use it to generate new material that can simplify or automate a range of tasks. Microsoft is baking the technology, developed with partner OpenAI Inc., into many of its biggest products. That includes Office and Windows, potentially putting customers in legal jeopardy.

Artists, writers and software developers are already filing lawsuits or raising objections about their creations being used without their consent. In one complaint, lawyer and computer programmer Matthew Butterick accused Microsoft’s GitHub partner of allegedly violating open-source software development licenses. A group of anonymous individuals seeking class action status also has filed suit against OpenAI and Microsoft. They claiming the companies are stealing “vast amounts” of personal information to train AI models in a heedless hunt for profits.

News organizations are mulling their own complaints, comedian Sarah Silverman has filed suit against OpenAI and Meta Platforms Inc., and artists are suing AI image generators Stability AI and Midjourney in a San Francisco court, although the judge has expressed skepticism about aspects of the case.

Copyright infringement and generative AI

Generative AI could raise novel questions about the fair use of copyrighted materials, a legal defense that allows the use of content in certain cases. Fair-use doctrine itself has been further complicated by a May Supreme Court ruling in favor of a photographer who accused the Andy Warhol estate of improperly using her work to create 16 images of the late musician Prince.

It’s not the first time Microsoft has deployed a legal shield to keep customers loyal. In the 2000s, the company offered indemnification to partners and later customers using or reselling its software, a bid to differentiate Microsoft from Linux and other open-source software makers. In 2017, Microsoft, by then a seller of open-source software itself, offered to protect customers of its Azure cloud products from legal claims.

The company in June announced a program to help customers ensure the AI programs they run on Microsoft platforms meet global laws and regulations. Earlier this year, Adobe Inc. also offered subscribers of its AI tools legal protection against copyright infringement.

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The typical ecommerce basket in East Africa is about 5,242 Kenyan shillings ($36), while a basket settled using a point-of-sale terminal averages 5,117 shillings (about $35), according to Agosta Liko, founder and group chief executive officer of Nairobi-based Pesapal.

The company forecasts East Africa ecommerce basket values will increase by as much as 18% in the next two years.

“It will be driven by growing acceptance among customers and by retailers diversifying to digital products,” Liko said in response to emailed questions.

Africa ecommerce growth

A report by McKinsey & Co. published in September projects East Africa’s payments market, primarily in Kenya and Uganda, to grow at 20% annually until 2025. West Africa, including Nigeria, Ghana and Ivory Coast, is the fastest-growing sub-region at 35%. On the continent, the industry is forecast to reach $40 billion by 2025. That would be up from $16 billion in 2020, according to the management consulting giant.

Other ecommerce payment drivers in East Africa are the travel and hospitality industry, telecommunications companies, utilities and government services, Liko said.

“Public policy continues to enable innovation and even drive adoption through e-government initiatives,” Liko said. “Ecommerce is still fragmented, but COVID-19 kicked this forward by a decade.”

The payments platform began operations in 2009. It offers services to more than 50,000 businesses and people in:

• Kenya
• Rwanda
• Tanzania
• Uganda

Pesapal partners with platforms including Apple Pay, Fitbit Pay and Google Pay, telecommunications companies such as Airtel Africa Plc, MTN Group Ltd., Safaricom Plc, and Tigo by Millicom International Cellular, to enable payments both online or at a physical point-of-sale.

Africa is the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market, and with integration of innovations such as QR codes and near-field communication in phones, changes in its payments landscape are likely to accelerate, Liko said.

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Salesforce revenue drivers

Salesforce revenue grew to $8.60 billion for the quarter. Furthermore, Salesforce subscription and support revenue grew 12% year over year to $8.01 billion. Professional services and “other revenues” increased 3% to $600 million, Salesforce said.

Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff said Salesforce artificial intelligence data and its customer relationship management (CRM) system “propelled us to become the third largest enterprise software company by revenue in the world.”

In the Asia Pacific region, Salesforce revenue grew 20%. in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Salesforce revenue grew 13%. Meanwhile, in the Americas, Salesforce revenue grew 10%.

Salesforce embracing generative AI

“We are at the dawn of an AI revolution,” Benioff said. He added that every CEO he has “met with this year across every industry believes that AI is essential to improving both their top and bottom line.”

He also said Salesforce has “published some of the first papers on prompt engineering and the beginnings of generative AI.”

Expanding on that, Benioff said Salesforce sees the development of ethical AI through its $500 million generative AI fund.

“We are very thirsty to make sure that Salesforce is the number one AI CRM,” Benioff said.

New technology, new hires?

Salesforce recently added new applications to its suite. The new apps are designed to support sales, customer service and marketing, using artificial intelligence and integration with Salesforce’s technology customer relationship management to drive a personalized customer experience, Salesforce said.

Included in Salesforce’s new Commerce Cloud embedded apps and integrations:

• Reorder Portal
• Order Support
• Pay Now

Salesforce announced the suite of new artificial intelligence features in June. They will cost roughly $7,200 per user each year. Salesforce followed in July with the first price increase in seven years.

Benioff said new product features, including those powered by artificial intelligence, will be demonstrated at the company’s annual conference in September. The event, called Dreamforce, is held in the company’s hometown of San Francisco.

After announcing large job cuts earlier this year, Salesforce has approved a budget for new hiring, particularly in research and development areas like artificial intelligence, said Mike Spencer, executive vice president of investor relations. Even with those additional employees, the company’s headcount will be 10% lower at the end of the fiscal year, he said. That’s due to continuing trims and performance-based reductions such as one in Ireland earlier this month that are separate from the major workforce cuts announced in January, Spencer said.

Salesforce had 70,456 full-time employees at the end of the fiscal second quarter on July 31, a 10% decline from a year earlier, according to a statement from Benioff.

Salesforce earnings

For the fiscal 2024 second quarter ended July 31, 2023, Salesforce reported:

• Revenue grew to $8.60 billion. That’s up 11% year over year from $7.72 billion in the comparable 2022 period.
• Subscriptions and support accounted for more than $8.00 billion.
• Gross profit was $6.49 billion, up from $5.59 billion in the year-ago period.

For the six months ended July 31, 2023, Salesforce reported:

• Revenue grew to $16.85 billion from $15.13 billion in the year-ago period.
• Subscriptions and support accounted for $15.65 billion.
• Gross profit was $12.61 billion, up from $10.96 billion in the year-ago period.

Percentage changes may not align exactly with dollar figures due to rounding. Check back for more earnings reports.

Bloomberg News contributed to this report.

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The two companies both sell ecommerce software and services to brands and merchants. They said Amazon’s “Buy with Prime” will soon be among the tools available to Shopify’s merchants in the U.S. The program started Aug. 30 for invited Shopify sellers. It will roll out to all Shopify merchants who want to use Amazon’s logistics network by the end of September, Amazon said in a statement.

Amazon is No. 1 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers. Amazon is also No. 3 in Digital Commerce 360’s Global Online Marketplaces Database, which ranks the 100 largest such marketplaces by 2023 third-party GMV. The latest analysis of the industry as a whole is published within the 2023 Global Online Marketplaces Report.

Context behind the Amazon Shopify deal

Amazon launched Buy with Prime last year, a move widely seen as an effort to blunt the momentum of Shopify. The Canada-based company grew rapidly in recent years by building ecommerce tools that promised to help brands sell goods from their own websites, rather than on a marketplace like Amazon or eBay.

Amazon, the largest U.S. online retailer, commands a gigantic customer base. But it has drawn complaints from some of its sellers for dictating terms and being slow to respond to their concerns.

Buy with Prime enables merchants who use Amazon’s payment and fulfillment services to include Amazon’s checkout service and speedy shipping guarantees on items sold from their own sites. Amazon says the integration makes shoppers more likely to make purchases from unfamiliar brands or websites because they trust the experience with Amazon.

Under the Amazon Shopify deal announced Aug. 30, Shopify Payments will process the payments through the company’s checkout service. Previously, Shopify had warned merchants who used Buy with Prime that the integration violated Shopify’s terms of service. Shopify prevented it from protecting against fraud, according to Marketplace Pulse, which tracks online sellers.

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