Only 13% of US adults have used augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) while shopping. Though the overwhelming majority have not, 38% are at least somewhat interested in trying the tech.

US ecommerce holiday sales will increase by 2.5% this year, an underwhelming figure compared with 8.6% growth in 2021 and a 33.0% surge in 2020.

In the US, 31% of millennials shop via mobile on weekdays while at home. That’s up 4 percentage points from 2019, while the share who do so via desktop/laptop has decreased by the same amount, to 18%. Since 2019, the shopping habits of US millennials have pivoted away from the weekends and toward mobile.

BNPL providers must develop consumer rewards programs to effectively compete within consumer payments.

Our inaugural study evaluates 49 BNPL features based on customer demand, according to results of a survey of US BNPL users.

Insider Intelligence spoke with Lilian Rincon, senior director of product for Shopping at Google, about the tech giant’s newest features, ranging from personalized suggestions to showcasing products in 3D.

Digital coupons can incentivize buying, increase basket sizes, and introduce new customers to a brand. And they are especially important amid economic uncertainty. Scroll through our 10-slide deck for insight on what you need to know now.

Consumers are feeling increasingly uneasy about the economic future. Despite a strong US job market, inflation and a potential recession remain top of mind for many. How are consumers adapting to this uncertain economic climate?

More than half of US adults shop online at least once a week, and 16% do so at least once a day. Overall, online shopping is on the rise and moving to mobile.

In December 2021, Insider Intelligence analysts published their top five retail trends for 2022, detailing our predictions for the upcoming year. But 2022 has been anything but predictable. In this Analyst Take, we revisit those trends to find out what’s changed, what’s stayed the same, and how we’re thinking about five of retail's biggest trends amid this era of uncertainty.

In our 2022 US Cash-Back Credit Card Emerging Features Benchmark report, we analyze the most in-demand features an issuer can offer to attract customers.

This year, 64% of consumers worldwide—or as many as 1.70 billion digital buyers of the 2.65 billion we forecast—will regularly buy directly from a brand, up 15 percentage points from 2019.

In the US, desktop computers had the highest ecommerce conversion rate of any device during Q4 2021, at 3.8%. Tablets followed with a 3.2% conversion rate, while mobile registered a substantially lower rate of 2.3%.

Nearly 2 in 5 augmented reality (AR) users in the US will shop with the technology this year, for a total of 35.0 million retail AR users. That base is up 18.8% from last year and will continue to grow at double-digit rates through 2024 as shoppers make use of virtual try-on and product visualization features.

Fragrances will see about $240 million in US ecommerce sales this year, following a massive 72.9% growth rate in 2021, when consumers returned to social activities but stuck with their pandemic-induced habit of shopping online.

In a study of select countries, adults favored in-store over online shopping everywhere except China. There, 54% would rather shop digitally and only 16% preferred physical stores, while the rest had no opinion.

Digital habits were supercharged through the pandemic. For those who had been around digital for much of their lives, however, the suddenly crowded digital ecosystem became a smorgasbord for them to snack on. And younger, more digital generations appear to be quite picky.

It should come as little surprise that Amazon was the top US shopping app in 2021, downloaded 40.0 million times that year. More remarkable is Shein’s leap to the No. 2 spot, up from seventh place in 2020. The Chinese fashion giant had 32.0 million US downloads under its belt in 2021, 68% more than the year prior.

US retail ecommerce sales will exceed $1 trillion for the first time this year as the flexibility and convenience customers found during the pandemic sticks.

Cyber Week was the biggest ecommerce week of the US holiday season in 2021, accounting for 23% of the online gross merchandise value (GMV) from that period. The week of December 12 was the second biggest, contributing a much smaller share, with 13% of ecommerce GMV.