Category: Research

With less than one week to go before the CommerceNext Virtual Summit on July 28-29, we’re giving you a first look at our second annual retail marketing benchmark report. This free report is full of useful data about how brands have shifted their retail marketing priorities in response to the pandemic. Download the full report now: The Big Pivot: How Traditional and Digital-first Retailers Re-prioritized Marketing Investments in the Wake of COVID-19. How we did it Like last year, we conducted a survey of senior-level marketing executives to gauge which strategies, technologies and channels they were planning to invest in for 2020. The

“May you live in interesting times,” goes the ancient curse. Sadly, we are living in the most interesting times that generations of Americans have ever experienced. Mixed signals and confusion, it seems, are par for the course in interesting times. On June 5th we learned the U.S. unemployment rate for May was 13.3%—and this was considered good news despite the fact that, prior to COVID-19, unemployment hadn’t exceeded 10% since World War II. Retailers have felt acute pain driven by the stay-at-home and social distancing requirements caused by COVID-19. The U.S. Commerce Department reported that April 2020 retail sales were 16% below March,

As new COVID-19 infection rates, deaths and other daily measures begin to taper, consumers cautiously peek out of their blinds and begin to imagine a future beyond COVID-19. History tells us that seminal events impact us for years after. The Great Depression created a generation that was forever frugal. September 11th compelled all Americans to question their fundamental safety in ways that persist two decades later. COVID-19 will not be an exception. To understand where consumers’ minds are today, CommerceNext partnered with BizRate Insights to survey Americans about what they have done differently because of the threat of COVID-19 and how they expect

While no one knows what the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will be, social distancing and economic shutdowns will have a lasting impact on consumer behaviors and the way people engage with digital media. As the crisis continues, 95% of Americans are currently under stay-at-home orders and new social distancing lifestyles and behaviors are changing the way consumers interact with content across platforms. In recent weeks, internet usage is reported to have increased by 50-70%. Social platform usage, messaging and video communication are all on the rise, along with short-form video, streaming OTT and podcast engagement.  This increase in time spent with

CommerceNext continues our coverage of COVID-19’s impact on ecommerce and retail. We  recently completed our second survey to ascertain the effects of the pandemic on digital retail business. The majority of questions remained the same as our first survey, which collected data from the first half of March, in order to benchmark results. While the data from the survey paints a very challenging environment for digital retail, it is uplifting to see that the category hit the hardest (apparel and accessories) is also the category adjusting their operations the most to help manufacture COVID-19 necessities (e.g., masks, face shields, hand sanitizer, etc.). Kudos