Ecommerce News Roundup | 20 February 2023
ChatGPT musings…
Is this the end of search as we know it? There are so many opinions about ChatGPT that it is difficult to know where to start. From a digital marketing POV, one thing seems (?) to be clear; Google is under serious danger of being completely disrupted by Bing. Maybe not in a terminal way but definitely in a way that ends its 20 year hegemony.
Secondly, and maybe this is merely a UX thing, but where does a producer get rewarded for writing relevant content if they are not referenced in a ChatGPT conversation? Is this the death of SEO and content marketing? Or at the very least – what will SEO and Content look like in a ChatGPT or LLM product world?
And one of our favourite themes – the recent relative gain of brand over performance marketing….see AirBnB below. It’s not binary, it’s a mix; and different channels work for different outcomes.
Macro-economic good news
– UK inflation has fallen faster than expected, more UK jobs were created than expected and retail has been more robust with a 0.5% gain MOM.
– European consumer confidence is back to pre-war level as gas stocks remain at record levels.
– Good news from the US as consumer spending grows more than 6% in the Nov-Jan period.
Have a good week
James & Patrick
“IN ORDER TO CONTROL MYSELF, I MUST FIRST ACCEPT MYSELF BY GOING WITH AND NOT AGAINST MY NATURE.”
UK ECOMMERCE NEWS – Dunelm, Castore…
ONS reports ecommerce discounting drives Jan sales. Retail sales had a surprising lift in January, driven by shoppers taking advantage of online deals post-Christmas…
ChargedRetail
Dunelm interim results for H2 up 5%. Highlights include a positive response from customers to the Dunelm offer across categories, with a significantly increased range on Dunelm.com, buoyed by the launch of around 10,000 new SKUs…
Dunelm
Manchester-based Castore secures finance after huge growth. Castore, which is backed by Andy Murray among others, added that the facility has been put in place “following continued strong trading for the business and strong forecast growth in 2023”.
BusinessLive
INTERNATIONAL ECOMMERCE NEWS – SecretSales, AirBnB, Lanvin…
Secret Sales 70% up as it storms ahead in Europe. Chris Griffin, CEO, Secret Sales, comments: “The cost-of-living crisis has triggered an increased appetite for both the circular fashion economy and more specifically non-full price. We anticipate that consumers will continue to invest in quality goods at affordable prices, especially while everyone feels the impact of the current climate.”
InternetRetailing
Airbnb sees huge growth by balancing brand and performance. The home-sharing company posted its most profitable quarter to date, saying its prepandemic move away from search advertising has been a good bet…
WSJ
Shopify shows strong top line growth. Shopify said it expects revenue growth in the “high teen percentages” for the rest of 2023…
digitalcommerce360
Lanvin shows strongest growth in Europe. The group said channel initiatives in 2022 expanded both direct-to-consumer (DTC) and wholesale sales, with DTC revenues increasing 35%…
FashionNetwork