The retail technology week in numbers
$700 million…Amazon is to invest over $700 million to retrain 100,000 of its US employees by 2025 as technology reshapes various roles at the e-commerce giant.
3…The Co-op has launched its robot delivery service in a third store.
65%…The potential for 5G to revolutionise the way people shop on the go is unlikely, according to research by GlobalData.
It surveyed 10,000 UK online shoppers and found that 65% prefer to browse products on their smartphones and then make purchases on a laptop or desktop at home.
$40 million…tZERO, the crypto arm of US online retail giant Overstock, is to tokenize forthcoming movie, Atari: Fistful of Quarters. The project claims to be the first implementation of blockchain technology to fund a film.
It will develop the Bushnell token, sold by the film production and financing company, Vision Tree. The plan is to raise as much as $40 million. Token owners, in addition to receiving shares of movie earnings, will also be able to vote on the trailer and have a say in choosing the cast.
73%…The majority of retailers are unaware of the impact and value of shipping options, according to research by BigCommerce.
The company surveyed 283 online shoppers in the UK and 776 of its merchants from the UK, US and Australia. It found that 73% of the former have abandoned their cart because they did not like the shipping options on offer. Yet 47% of the latter don’t know their cart abandonment rates.
1,100…Kohl’s has expanded its Amazon Returns kiosks to 1,100+ locations across the US.
$9.85 billion...The global blockchain supply chain market, valued at $93.16 million in 2017, is set to reach $9.85 billion by 2025, according to a study by Allied Market Research (AMR).
70%…Around 70% of consumers are expecting to participate in Amazon Prime Day 2019, according to research by Periscope By McKinsey.
300…Ocado is expanding its network of development hubs into London, creating 300 new jobs in the process.
50%…Online shopping will account for more than 50% of retail sales (up from 19% currently) in the next ten years, according to a new report by law firm Womble Bond Dickinson (WBD).
1.3%…UK retailers have just experienced their worst June on record.
According to BRC and KPMG research, on a total basis sales decreased by 1.3% last month, against an increase of 2.3% a year earlier. This drags the three-month average into a decline of 0.1% and the 12-month average to an increase of 0.6%, the lowest since records began in December 1995.
375 million...Asda is set to become the first UK supermarket to stop providing single use plastic carrier bags with its online grocery orders.
Following a trial period in South West England and from its Dartford home shopping centre, it will remove the option on all grocery home shopping and Click & Collect orders nationwide from 31st July, resulting in a saving of over 500 tonnes of plastic. It stopped offering single use bags in its stores in 2018 and says that in total it will now produce 375 million fewer plastic bags each year.
66%…Brits care far more about online payment security than speed and convenience, according to research carried out by YouGov on behalf of Equifax.
66% of the 2,021 people surveyed rated safe and secure payments as most important in the online checkout process, with only one in ten being most concerned about speed or simplicity.
100…Asos is set to make job cuts following problems at its new US warehouse and slowing sales. The Sunday Times reports that the fast fashion pureplay is consulting on around 100 redundancies (mostly in the marketing department) at its London head office.
38.9%…The US leads the way when it comes to volume of tweets referencing Bitcoin and Facebook’s Libra project.
According to a Twitter thread published by crypto trading platform The TIE, 38.9% of total Bitcoin tweets come from the US and 10.5% from the UK. The top five countries where Bitcoin is discussed on the social media platform are the US, UK, Canada, Turkey, India and Australia.
1 billion yuan…Chinese women’s football has received a major boost, with Ant Financial’s Alipay announcing it will provide 1 billion yuan ($145.43 million) in funding for a 10-year project.