Market Insights

Apparel, as a category, has been a key driver of retail sales for decades. But with major changes being experienced in the industry, many are wondering what the future holds.

Toys ‘R Us has come crashing down, as irresistible – and arguably inevitable – forces brought the household name to the edge of oblivion.  What caused this? How can companies guard against this? What impact does this have on companies both online and off?

When it comes to e-commerce, there’s no doubt that Amazon is king – at least for now. They are so big, so influential, that what they do impacts the entire market. More than this, people follow Jeff Bezos’ company because they have continued to make successful moves into new areas, identifying new opportunities and new markets, and even creating some of these markets themselves.

Retail has really come a long way, and is on the forefront of the intersection between tech and commerce. This has become a battleground, where the stakes are high – trillions of dollars in revenues – and the competitors are constantly trying to outwit and outflank each other to achieve global domination. Here, we’ll look at some of the moves, both strategic and tactical, that are going down in this exciting war for wallets.

The fashion sneaker market is booming with Nike and Adidas competition rises to new levels. In a recent article by Richard Weiss and Thomas Muiler on Bloomberg Adidas CEO Kasper Rorsted says “focusing on fast-fashion and stripping away non-core businesses like golf and hockey will increase profit more than expected, lifting the shares to a record” …

Many e-commerce intelligence solutions use ratings and reviews as a mechanism to predict things like seller performance, or sales of a product or brand. A common algorithm used in such products predicts sales performance based on reviews received. With what can be described as an epidemic of fake reviews affecting the major platforms, this metric will be wildly inaccurate.

Amazon’s Black Friday sales hit a record high of $2.4B across its three major sites in the US, UK and Germany. The US market dominated, as could be expected, hitting $1.8bn in sales; at peak hour, which was 1pm EST, there were 2m transactions taking place.

Halloween is a great time. It means pumpkins, trick-or-treating, and of course, that time of year when dressing up in ridiculous outfits is completely acceptable! We’ve put together our top 7 Couples Halloween Costumes of 2017, based on online shopping trends. Read on to see Market Beyond’s Top 7 of Halloween 2017:

It’s the ultimate battle, a clash of titans, as two giants line up against each other to decide who takes the lion’s share of a trillion dollar market. Retail powerhouses Amazon and Walmart are poised to fight it out it over the $2 trillion groceries market – the online portion of which is estimated to be over $100bn by 2025.

On Tuesday, Amazon held its annual Prime Day, and the results didn’t disappoint. It was the biggest day of sales in its history.
The 30-hour event generated a 60% jump in sales from last year, and it was no surprise that Amazon products lead the top selling items with Echo Dot smart speaker topping the list.

Over the last years, Chinese smartphones are becoming more common outside of China providing improved quality and functionality. However, while Huawei and Lenovo enjoy good brand awareness outside of China, Xiaomi – China’s leading smartphone vendor, shows very low presence in top Western markets.
In this report we examine…