E-commerce trends for 2020

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This article was published 23/12/2019 (2139 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Shopping malls will transform into experience centres, forms of payment sweeping China will rise in popularity and Amazon will find out it isn’t invincible.

Those are the predictions from digital marketing agency Absolunet as part of its list of the top 10 e-commerce trends for 2020.

Absolunet claims it has correctly predicted the following year’s e-commerce trends with an 87.5 per cent accuracy since releasing its first list in 2015.

Although Canada generally experiences e-commerce trends three years after the United States, this gap is narrowing, said Bernard Dahl, Absolunet creative director. Some readers tend to be apprehensive about Absolunet’s results at first glance, he said.

It’s a list that doesn’t surprise Kathy Knight, CEO of the Information and Communication Technologies Association of Manitoba, however.

Last year, Canadian retail e-commerce sales increased by nine per cent compared to 2017, according to Statista.com, and are expected to continue growing in the coming years. Revenues are predicted to increase from $40 billion in 2018 to almost 40 per cent more by 2023.

“After years of innovation and technology selection, brands and retailers are now competing on speed, efficiency and simplicity of experience — all while juggling increased data, accessibility and privacy concerns,” said Charles Desjardins, Absolunet executive vice-president. “Commerce has transcended physical and digital channels. The ‘e’ in e-commerce is becoming superfluous.”

Shopping malls won’t cease to be relevant to consumers, even though the e-commerce market has been growing in the past decade.

With the increase in online sales, shopping malls are shifting their focus from merchandising to promoting experiences, said Fang Wan, professor of marketing at the University of Manitoba Asper School of Business.

“I think it’s evolving to be more compatible with people’s lifestyle because our lifestyle is evolving,” she said.

Knight said this shift is already happening in Winnipeg, including at CF Polo Park.

Some shopping malls are moving toward hosting events and providing space for sought-after food establishments and offices.

Along with this changing landscape, Wan said local merchants should be aware of payment methods currently popular in China — including Alipay, QR code payments and WeChat Pay.

Absolunet suggested Alipay and WeChat Pay combined have 10 times more users than Apple Pay, with Chinese consumers such as immigrants, students and tourists bringing their digital-payment habits and expectations to North America and across the globe.

“Their purchase power is something that we really cannot underestimate,” Wan said.

“If you recognize the power of the Chinese customer and their purchase power, then using their payment system is, of course, a no-brainer.”

As of November, WeChat Pay has partnered with Visa, MasterCard and American Express, among others, permitting foreign visitors to China to link their international credit cards to the platform.

Along with these trends, Absolunet also suggested there will be a shift in retailers linking shoppers’ online data with in-person data thanks to cameras and facial-recognition technology.

How mainstream this will become is still up in the air. Last year, reports confirming Cadillac Fairview tested facial-recognition software in two Calgary malls were met with some public concern.

“It needs to be voluntary,” Wan said. Customers “need to be aware, and they need to make a conscious choice.

“You have to give them that opportunity.”

As consumers become more educated about their privacy rights, they’re increasingly prepared to bargain for a worthwhile exchange, Knight said.

Absolunet suggested there may be a shift toward privacy by design and consumers receiving some kind of payment for sharing their data. One example they cited comes from earlier this year, in which Jaguar Land Rover announced it was testing a cryptocurrency payment to its drivers who shared data with them on potholes and traffic congestion.

Overall, there’s been a shift from advertisers and marketers pushing their messages to entice shoppers’ attention to using consumer-generated traffic, Wan said.

“This level of precision is really backed up by big data,” she said. “That’s what makes that big data so overwhelmingly relevant, and everybody wants a piece of it.”

While data is helpful, Wan said the question remains as to whether some merchants even have the capabilities to analyze their data and use it to guide their in-store design and product decisions.

city.desk@freepress.mb.ca