Have you ever heard the term “TikTok brain”? Tiktok videos, reels, and other short formats are killing our attention span, and there is now a name for this phenomenon. In fact, nearly 50% of users surveyed by TikTok said that videos longer than a minute long were “stressful”. ONE minute is stressful now?! In addition to shrinking our attention spans, short videos are highly addictive, with the average TikTok user spending a whopping 95 minutes a day on the app. With this data in mind, it is no surprise that the recent TikTok ecommerce venture, TikTok Shops, is successful. But this success might be short-lived in some countries, with Indonesia very recently banning shopping transactions on social media apps.
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In the latest news, the President of Indonesia has announced that his country is considering issuing new regulations regarding social commerce, the use of social media for direct online product sales. The main reason behind these potential regulations is the concern over predatory pricing and unfair competition that offline businesses might face.
Continue readingDon’t we all hate it when we see a hotel room, plane ticket, or concert ticket at an attractive price, only to be hit with a million extra fees during checkout? Convenience fees, payment processing fees, because-we-can fees, and various fuck-you fees makes a miserable shopping for customers. That delicious $12 burger you found on the food delivery app? $40 after various fees, delivery, and tip. And what’s this? An “e-ticket delivery fee”? Receiving your football game tickets via email now comes with a price tag.
Continue readingChances are, you’ve heard about Amazon’s Big Deal Days, that magical event that makes our wallets lighter. But do you know about Walmart’s Holiday Kickoff sale? Planned from October 9th to 12th, this event will overlap with Amazon’s own sale on October 10th and 11th. Walmart has big plans to increase its ecommerce presence and also said it generated over $80 billion from ecommerce in 2022, which is a 9% growth. That is better than Amazon’s overall ecommerce revenue growth of less than 6%.
Continue readingBack in April 2022, Amazon launched their “Buy with Prime” program, allowing sellers to offer customers shopping on their website the option to make purchases using their Amazon Prime accounts and receive items through Amazon’s sophisticated fulfillment network. The goal was to generate additional revenue for Amazon, gather data, and compete with platforms like Shopify.
Continue readingI am fascinated by the increasing competition between social media platforms and online marketplaces. In a recent piece, I wrote about the concept of omnichannel e-commerce and how the distinction between sales channels is blurring. However, it seems that figuring out who is engaged in ecommerce and who is doing social media is becoming increasingly difficult.
Continue readingI just saw today that Amazon removed the total number of reviews from the search results (except for some sponsored ads) and replaced it with the rating + the percentage of 5-star reviews. They also display the number of units sold in the past month for some listings.
I believe this change will:
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