eMarketer principal analyst Andrew Lipsman talks with Scott Silverman, co-founder of retail conference CommerceNext, about how D2C brands and retailers are earmarking their digital investment dollars. Lipsman also weighs in on Brandless’s new CEO, Nordstrom being a “no-growth” retailer and Starbucks’s new tie-dye Frappuccino.

Growth of retail sales in China is declining, due to economic and geopolitical challenges, and will not overtake the US until 2021. But retail ecommerce has continued to flourish in some surprising ways under these current circumstances.

Earlier this month, Philadelphia passed a bill rendering cashless stores like Amazon Go and Sweetgreen illegal and banning future establishments from completely abandoning cash. By July 2019, most retailers in the city will be required to offer consumers a cash payment option.

Mobile payments have been thought to be on the cusp of widespread adoption for several years now. But most consumers have responded to the technology with a noncommittal shrug.

Of the 938.2 million proximity mobile payment users worldwide, over two-thirds reside in China and India. Consumer adoption is still in its early days for most markets, but there will be fast growth in retailer support and usage over the next few years.

China’s fast-paced retail ecommerce growth hasn’t spelled doom for physical stores. Rather, brick-and-mortar is undergoing a transformation of its own, underlined by an infusion of technology and the growing integration between online and offline.

Mobile has become integral to the shopping experience, yet when it comes to transacting—especially in store—US consumers still aren't fully on-board.

If you think consumers want brands to be neutral on social issues, you would be wrong. Belief-driven buyers—consumers who choose, switch, avoid or boycott a brand based on its stand on societal issues—are the majority in 2018.

Impersonal or practical, gift cards are integral to the holiday season. Purchases of gift cards also keep rising every year. In 2017, US internet users purchased an average of 6.5 gift cards and 6.1 digital cards, up from 5.9 and 4.0 in 2016, according to First Data.

Personalized messages, geolocated notifications, loyalty programs—all are available via mobile passes in wallets.

Adoption of proximity mobile payments in the US continues to grow, but at an increasingly tepid pace. They’ve yet to unseat credit cards as the payment option of choice. Meanwhile, peer-to-peer (P2P) payment adoption is driven by platforms like Venmo and Zelle.

The news that Starbucks was among the companies working on a platform called Bakkt that will allow consumers to "buy, sell, store and spend digital assets on a seamless global network" was widely interpreted as a sign that the coffee giant was set to accept cryptocurrency payments. Not exactly.