Boomers may find digital shopping a stickier habit than expected: Lockdowns increased ecommerce spending for the generation, and many will continue to shop online post-pandemic.
Uber Eats doubled its sales last year: In addition to the surge in food delivery during the pandemic, the company's ability to cross-promote with its rides business (with both riders and drivers) helped drive growth.
China shops abroad: Chinese consumers will increase their spending on products from foreign ecommerce sellers by more than 17% this year as the pandemic continues to accelerate the shift to digital.
Advancements in marketing tech and new data-collection tactics offer retailers ever-greater insights into the minds of their customers, but only to a certain degree. Accomplishing a level of personalization that will truly impact a company's bottom line isn’t easy nor straightforward. But it does require more investment in collecting the right data with the most effective tools, and then harnessing those findings for deep personalization.
YouTube Mall is here: YouTube is entering social commerce with its new shoppable video tags, and we think it’s likely to add full checkout functionality soon, making it a digital shopping destination.
DoorDash dashes past competitors: Lockdowns only accelerated the rapid growth of digital restaurant marketplaces in 2020. DoorDash was a major winner and will make up more than half the US market this year.
The emergence of new companies selling direct online has been a big story for some time. Mattress brands Casper and Emma, luggage maker Away, beauty company Glossier, and garment retailer Happy Socks were among the first highly successful direct-to-consumer (D2C) firms, many of them based in Europe.