ChatGPT will transform formulaic tasks like product descriptions and inventory management. As OpenAI makes more integrations available, adoption will become increasingly common. Here’s how major retailers are already using ChatGPT.

Smaller retailers are gaining share and reshaping the ecommerce landscape, but will they be able compete with giants like Amazon?

After a slight dip in 2022, US retail ecommerce sales growth will accelerate each year through 2027, according to our forecast. By that point, ecommerce sales will reach $1.736 trillion and make up one-fifth of total retail sales.

Health and personal care will drive growth but won’t be enough to improve Amazon’s share of the overall US ecommerce market.

TikTok sister app Douyin is a livestream behemoth in China, where nearly 40% of internet users also engage in livestream shopping, according to our forecast. But in the US, the format hasn’t caught on in the same way.

This year, we forecast US off-premise alcohol retail sales (i.e., alcohol purchased for at-home consumption) will grow by a modest 3.5% to $178.20 billion. This growth will accelerate slightly through 2027, driven by three areas of opportunity within the industry: ecommerce, customers willing to splurge on premium beverages, and at-home consumption trends.

This year, the payments industry will face its first major test following pandemic-driven digitization as economic uncertainty pressures customer habits. This is the data you need to understand the major changes facing the payments ecosystem in 2023—and how to navigate them.

The retail space is changing rapidly as marketers experiment with things like retail media, generative AI, and social commerce. In this discussion, Zia Daniell Wigder, Chief Content Officer, Insider Intelligence, talks about the trends on her radar and what she learned at Shoptalk.

Beauty is proving resilient to the cost-of-living crisis as shoppers splurge on premium products to boost their mood and skin health. But it won’t escape unscathed, with consumers already streamlining their beauty regimes and searching for bargains online.

Which networks should brands be paying attention to as they refine their retail media strategy? From the king of them all to the ones that are just catching up, here are five retail media networks to keep an eye on this year.

By 2026, US spending on ecommerce channel ads—a large subset of retail media—will be more than triple its 2020 level, per our forecast. Within the ecommerce channel, both search and display advertising are growing rapidly.

US ecommerce growth will come from large retail categories with historically low online sales share. And growth will stay healthy even as traditional drivers of online sales take a backseat to emerging categories.

“We’re showing 20.5% growth for retail media ad spending this year, and 22.9% actually accelerating into next year,” said senior forecaster Ethan Cramer-Flood at our recent “Attention! Seizing the Retail Media Opportunity” summit. That stat assumes inflation will cool some in the second half of this year, which our forecasters currently predict it will.

At least 10% of US ecommerce orders were returned each week from last November through mid-January, according to Salesforce. The return rate was as high as 16% in some weeks, a significant increase over the previous holiday season.

Worldwide, retail sales growth has rebounded after taking a dive in 2020, per our forecast. Though growth rates won’t return to their pre-pandemic levels, they will stay steady through 2026. Meanwhile, ecommerce sales growth has decelerated after a few banner years, falling to single digits from 2022 through the end of our forecast period.

Retail media will be a $45 billion market this year and will continue to grow by about $10 billion in 2024, according to our forecast. Currently, the majority of retail media ad spend is driven by search. But the next phase will be driven by upper-funnel formats and in-store ad opportunities.

Brands were abuzz at eTail West 2023 in Palm Springs this week, talking about tech, loyalty, and integration. Here are our top five takeaways from brands like GNC, Poshmark, and Spanx.

Deal-seeking by consumers, heavy discounting from retailers, and a longer holiday shopping season drove an uptick in returns during the 2022 holiday season. Retailers will need to plan their promotional calendars carefully to manage returns in 2023.