AUGUST - 2022 retailtechinsights.com9consumers move between an offline and online state.Just look at Koala, an Australian furniture e-retailer, which launched in 2015. Since inception, the business adopted a headless architecture via ShopifyPlus, allowing it to offer the right experience for customer type at the right time. And thanks to endless buyer-facing touchpoints and back-end flexibility, paired with its social impact mission - to save koalas - and aggressive social media campaigns targeting millennials, it's net revenue is expected to increase 74percent to $175 million in 2021, according to the Australian Financial Review.Emerging marketsAs seen by the meteoric rise of the Chinese e-commerce industry, emerging markets will increasingly play a defining role in the future of e-commerce, particularly considering around 3 billion consumers from emerging markets will have access to the internet by 2022. This is a huge opportunity for companies looking to tap new audiences and startups looking to leverage new markets. Importantly, a key to this market will be mobile commerce. The rise of internet access in emerging markets typically correlates with the increased adoption of smartphone use. Take India for example. Internet penetration levels raised from about 30 percent in 2013 to more than 80 percent in 2018, according to Credit Suisse, a surge largely driven by the increased use of smartphones and expansion in the mobile data market. PaymentsThen, of course, there's payments. Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) is just one of the multiple payment methods out there right now and a preferred way to buy. BNPL offers extreme flexibility in shopping online, enabling customers to make purchases and pay them off in installments over time with the store often incurring the interest, not the customer. With its popularity accelerated by the global pandemic and the adoption by millennial and Gen Z consumers, retail giants such as Alibaba have all jumped at the opportunity to offer the payment type. In the US alone, BNPL is expected to grow by 41.7% on an annual basis to reach US$126071.5 million in 2021, according to a recent Research and Markets report published by PRNewswire. Despite that, many agree that providers are still into a regulatory grey area with the need for a better understanding of how these services work and the associated risks, as outlined by a recent article by The Paypers.These are some of many defining trends currently at play in the e-commerce space, and just some of the ones we're watching at Antler. While it's in the industry's very nature to be constantly shifting as it meets the demands of younger shoppers, whilst leveraging new and powerful technologies to do so, the companies to win in the future will be those which can meet at the convergence of many of the trends aforementioned, while maintaining a focus on providing a convenient, customised experience for the buyer. That's not going to be easy for retailers, particularly more established companies, which will increasingly have to invest in and prioritize innovation and technology to stay ahead. But, on the flipside, it also makes e-commerce a very exciting space to build a new business in. Social media platforms are now also experimenting with live stream shopping, a trend also fuelled by the restrictions laid out in the wake of COVID-19
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