The retail technology week in numbers
RMB10 billion…Alibaba Group Executive Chairman Jack Ma is establishing the RMB10 billion ($1.5 billion) Alibaba Poverty Relief Fund, which will focus on combating poverty in rural China over the next five years.
100,000…Thousands of Morrisons staff are to be awarded compensation in relation to a data breach that lead to their details being published online. The retailer’s former auditor Andrew Skelton was jailed for eight years in 2015 for fraud after leaking details of nearly 100,000 staff, which included names, addresses, salary and bank account details. Skelton had a personal grievance against the grocery giant but the High Court found that the buck stopped with the employer, not the employee.
95%...of UK retailers believe that payment-over-time solutions are either important or very important to delivering future digital innovation, with 42% opting for the latter, according to research from Econocom UK.
0.6%...Black Friday failed to reignite the UK High Street last month as non-food retailers struggled. Research from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and KPMG showed like-for-like sales across the sector rose by just 0.6% in November compared to the same period last year. And this growth was almost entirely down to food sales and increasing prices.
£98.50…AmazonFresh has introduced the 24 carat ‘Golden Goose’, following a team up with C.Lidgate, a fifth-generation family butchers in Holland Park, London. Hand selected from Seldom Seen Farm in Leicester, each free range goose will be delivered with 24 carat edible gold leaf, for customers to apply once the bird is cooked and rested. The resulting 4.5-5kg ‘Golden Goose’ serves between five to six people and is available to buy from today on AmazonFresh for £98.50.
68%...of consumers would trust organisations more if they used biometrics for authentication, according to a new Unisys survey involving more than 3,500 people across seven countries in Europe.
75%...Personalisation is no longer a bonus but a marketing necessity, according to research from Eagle Eye, the SaaS technology company led by former Tesco CMO, Deputy CEO and Clubcard co-founder Tim Mason. 75% of 2,000 UK consumers surveyed were unhappy with generic offers and 81% considered relevance to be the most influential factor in whether they redeemed promotions.
5%...Retailers could see a 5% boost to annual revenues by driving emotional engagement with consumers. That’s according to a new report from Capgemini’s Digital Transformation Institute, titled Loyalty Deciphered— How Emotions Drive Genuine Engagement.
30,000…Starbucks is laying claim to its biggest and most interactive location to date, in Shanghai, following a team up with Alibaba Group. The two-story, 30,000-square-foot Roastery will be the company’s second after Seattle, with small-lot Reserve coffee sourced from around the globe, including China’s Yunnan province, prepared for sale and onsite consumption.
2.5 million…Brits will lose, misplace or have their debit or credit cards stolen over the festive period, five times more compared to same time last year, according to Metro Bank. If this happens, consumers could have to wait up to an average of 11 days for a replacement to be posted to them from other High Street banks.
70%...The White Company reports record online sales in the run up to Black Friday weekend and Cyber Monday. This follows the migration of its e-commerce business from legacy infrastructure to The Retail Cloud Team’s Digital Commerce Channel, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) solution for SAP Hybris customers.
The luxury lifestyle retailer’s e-commerce platform withstood an unprecedented peak trading period and the highest number of concurrent users ever seen. It experienced a 70% volume increase for customers visiting its website compared to last year’s Cyber Weekend and a 20% increase in sales conversions during the peak hour of trading.
£22.2 billion…The UK grocery market is set to experience 2.6% growth this Christmas, with shoppers spending £22.2 billion, according to IGD.
49.65%...Analysis from Adthena highlights how Amazon is dominating the competitive search landscape. Across the entire US consumer electronics market, the e-tailer’s share of ad spend on desktops weighs in at just over 15.35%, the largest among those retailers studied, including Walmart and Target. This has won Amazon 49.65% of the share of clicks in its category.
