EP112 - Annual Predictions for 2018

2017 Recap – Predictions made on episode 64

Jason

Retailers truly embrace Omni-channel (Attribution/Inventory/promotion/pricing – YES
A/I – Bots for Customer Service but probably not for transactions, lots of buzz on big data AI but no game changing new experience – No
Personalization – to eliminate friction, not drive new demand. Data integration not some new product or touchpoint –No
Laggard categories will discover digital (Grocery, Luxury, QSR) – Yes
Microservices – 50% of new platform implementations will be cloud, and Micro-service based solutions will start to emerge – Partial

Jason 2017 Score 2.5/5

Scot

The IPO market is going to be open, but the e-commerce companies will get crowded out by the big tech unicorns like Uber, Snap, pinterest, airbnb, spotify and the like – Partial
Amazon will start to chip away at the Fedex and UPS’s of the world with a service like this in the US. – No
Machine learning is the new ‘network effect’ – everyone has caught onto the power and competitive moats available from ML and that’s going to be a big theme. Every vendor you work with from carts to images to upsells to recommendations to search engine results to whatever is going to HAVE to have a ML capability to stay current and keep YOU competitive. – Yes
We’re going to see e-commerce growth accelerate pretty materially in 2017. We’ve been in this 15% band and I think we will see there was a move up in 2H16 to high teens and we could see 20’s in 2017 – Yes
eBay – it’s a do or die year for ebay, they could potential partner with Alibaba. – No

Scot 2017 Score 2.5/5

2018 Predictions

Scot

Mallageddon 2.0 – We saw 7000 stores close in 2017, I think this accelerates in 2018 as the 30-40% of weak malls fail and we end up with 9000 closures.
Amazon will NOT buy another offline retailer, triples down on private label.
I’m going to re-up on my Amazon logistics prediction, I think I was just a bit too early on that one, but I’ll make it bolder, that Amazon will squarely get in the last mile business in 2018 and compete with FedEx and UPS.Amazon’s ad group will get so large that they have to break out details about it and everyone will be shocked at how large it has gotten so quickly
Walmart will make a big M+A – top candidates would be Instacart, postmates and eBay.
Somebody acquires magento, or they go public.

Bonus – Amazon comes out with alexa powered wireless earbuds – because I want them.

Jason

Grocery gets disrupted by digital (led by curbside pickup). Digital grocery doubles in US, at least one delivery firm peters out.
Drug gets disrupted by digital.
AI Gap – biggest trend of 2018
Voice – Huge but not for commerce.
Payments – Retail digital wallets die (except Starbucks/Walmart/Amazon). Bitcoin tanks.

Bonus – Amazon launches a wearable.

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Episode 112 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2018.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at SapientRazorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

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