Get up to date with this week's ecommerce headlines from around the globe.
Amazon News
Amazon to scale back on its ‘oversaturated’ delivery network
Throughout the pandemic, Amazon invested heavily in its delivery network when there was high consumer demand. In light of increasing inflation and slowing demand, the company currently holds excess logistics capacity, and now needs to curb the growth of its third-party delivery partners. Amazon is projecting to add half the amount of new partners this year compared to the peak of the pandemic in 2020.
Amazon launches a cashback rewards system
Amazon will now pay for your own shopping data through a cashback rewards system, available now on the Alexa app. The feature, named Alexa Shopping List Savings, allows you to get money back on some purchases in exchange for your shopping data. Through this program, Amazon receives large quantities of consumer data, even about pricing on other stores.
Amazon teams up with EFG Hermes’ vaIU in Egypt to ease consumer financing
Egypt-based buy-now-pay-later platform, vaIU, has partnered with ecommerce giant, Amazon, to offer consumer financing by vaIU as a customised payment method on Amazon.eg. This will allow Amazon users to split the cost of their purchases into several payments.
Read more on The National News
Other Marketplace News
Chinese sellers outnumber American sellers on Walmart
Last year Walmart opened up its platform to international sellers. Since then, the marketplace has added close to 150,000 new sellers, 50% of which are sellers from China, outnumbering American sellers. There is a lack of presence of sellers from other international markets, something that Walmart views as a growth opportunity.
Read more on Marketplace Pulse
Little Red Book clamps down on wealth flaunting online
Chinese lifestyle platform, Little Red Book, will be monitoring and targeting both users and sellers who are displaying luxury products without useful information or using misleading pictures of luxury products to drive traffic. This has been done in an effort to maintain a transparent, authentic, and positive community on its platform, encouraging more honesty from customers and brands.
Chinese online retailer JD launches online-to-offline department store
JD is rolling out a new department store channel, incorporating some brands from its existing fashion and lifestyle categories. The company is planning to open brick-and-mortar stores in several major cities in China to build an offline presence.
Other Ecommerce News
Southeast Asian sellers remain bullish about business growth
Alibaba-owned online marketplace, Lazada, has said 77% of online sellers are expecting their sales to increase by over 10%, and have a confident outlook on business growth. According to Lazada's DCCI Q1 2022, sellers are feeling positive about the state of the economy, and Asean consumers consider online shopping to be a ‘key part of everyday life’.
Read more on New Straits Times
Major ecommerce players to join India’s Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC)
India’s recent launch of an ONDC aims to level the online shopping playing field in the country, breaking the dominance of large ecommerce firms. Flipkart, Reliance Retail and Amazon are now in talks to join in order to integrate with the open network and build open ecosystems.