Consumers are willing to pay more for choice in their interactions, yet most companies remain perplexed about which ones their customers really want—and how much to charge for them. How can companies best engage with their customers to offer them new experiences, along with add-ons to existing products or services they have already paid for?
The quality of these interactions has become…
This year has been a hotly anticipated revolution for digital payments, with both the General Data Protection Regulation ( GDPR) and the revised Payments Services Directive ( PSD2) coming into effect.
The potential of PSD2 is already under investigation from industries across the board since coming into effect in January 2018. From aviation to retail, the ability to change the customer…
The Christmas shopping season will be here before you know it. Shoppers begin making holiday purchases as soon as October. Those earlier purchases could help drive online sales to a new record in 2018. For the past five years, I have made a few holiday sales predictions. For 2018, I am betting on early shopping, mobile commerce, voice shopping, and free…
There’s little doubt that the youngest generations of consumers are transforming the shopping experience. As millennials move into the mainstream and Gen Z enters adulthood, these digital and social natives are not only exhibiting new shopping behavior, but they’re also shifting how brands interact with their consumers. And this is apparent in the way top brands are changing their approach…
The world’s largest payment card issuer, China UnionPay, is reportedly planning to enter the European market in a move that could cause serious competition for Visa and Mastercard. According to the Financial Times, the Chinese payments provider is planning to issue branded cards in the UK in October followed by similar moves in other European markets in December.
While UnionPay has…
Geo-blocking is a discriminatory practice that prevents online customers from accessing and purchasing products or services from a website based in another member state. In order to remove this barrier, the EU is putting in place a geo-blocking regulation.
On 27 February 2018, the Council adopted the regulation to ban unjustified geo-blocking in the internal market.
“The end of geo-blocking means wider choice, better deals for consumers…
Criminals cashing in on digital payment trends and the rise of cryptocurrencies can expect stiffer jail sentences under new rules approved by a powerful European Parliament committee.
The Civil Liberties Committee passed plans to combat fraud and counterfeiting of non-cash means of payment such as cards, electronic wallets, mobile payments and virtual currencies in an effort to remove gaps in national…
Recently, and in addition to the new Belgian privacy law, the law establishing the Information Security Committee has also been published in the Belgian Official Gazette. This is the next step Belgium is taking in the context of the implementation of privacy legislation after the law establishing the DPA (Data Protection Authority). 1. What does the Belgian law bring?
The new privacy…
Companies can determine whether they should invest in blockchain by focusing on specific use cases and their market position. Speculation on the value of blockchain is rife, with Bitcoin—the first and most infamous application of blockchain—grabbing headlines for its rocketing price and volatility. That the focus of blockchain is wrapped up with Bitcoin is not surprising given that its market value…
On 6 February MEPs agreed on a regulation to end geo-blocking and country redirects in the EU. The change will enter into force by December 3, 2018. Retailers will be obliged to give people access to goods and services on the same terms across the whole EU, wherever they may be connecting from.
How will it affect (cross-border) ecommerce in Europe and…
Many governments are currently rethinking their policies regarding cross-border data flows. Although cross-border data flows grew 45x between 2005 and 2014, according to a McKinsey analysis, events since 2014 have pushed the pendulum to swing away from unconstrained data globalization. Some policy makers are concerned about individual privacy rights, consumer rights regarding the ownership of data, domestic law enforcement, and…
European Union antitrust authorities have begun a preliminary investigation into Amazon.comInc.’s AMZN +1.11%treatment of other merchants that sell products using its platform, opening a new regulatory front against an American tech giant. EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Wednesday that investigators recently sent out questionnaires to merchants that sell through Amazon. The probe focuses on whether Amazon is gaining a…
The General Data Protection Regulation from the European Union takes effect on May 25. The law is sweeping, with massive fines for noncompliance. It affects most every company worldwide, large and small. It’s also confusing.
There is no better authority in the U.S. to explain the GDPR to ecommerce merchants than John Di Giacomo. He is founding partner of Revision Legal, a…
From Facebook Messenger to smart TVs to voice platforms such as Amazon’s Alexa, digital technology has created many choices for how people find, consume, and share content. The pressure is on for brands that want to meet their customers wherever they are. And they are everywhere. They are proficient with digital technology and demanding superior experiences across all touch points—including…
JPMorgan Chase is rebuilding its consumer business model to create a “digital everything” strategy that trades short-term losses for long-term profits. With $2.6 trillion in total assets, JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the US. Its retail bank, Chase, spans 61 million American households.
Led by Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon, the bank is undergoing a transformation, moving away from offline legacy systems and into…
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is evolving and showing strong growth for enterprises who are deploying conversation AI for customer service solutions. In the last eighteen months, the demand for conversational AI platforms and predictions from major analyst firms shows the trend is set to continue strongly in 2018. But throughout this, there is an underlying message; enterprises need to deploy conversational platforms…
What is the Payment Services Directive? The first Payment Services Directive (PSD1) was adopted in 2007. This legislation provides the legal foundation for an EU single market for payments, to establish safer and more innovative payment services across the EU. The objective was to make cross-border payments as easy, efficient and secure as ‘national’ payments within a Member State. …
The holidays can bring in as much as 30% of a retailer’s total sales in just one season. While this is a great opportunity, it can also stress out digital marketers who need to juggle omnichannel campaigns, market to new mobile shoppers, and optimize on past successes. But there’s no need to worry, because we’re here to help out. We pulled…
As an e-commerce seller, you know how important it is to optimise product content for search. Here at ChannelAdvisor, fine-tuning the right mix of keywords and descriptions has been known to increase search visibility by as much as 180%. Here’s the kicker: The way shoppers search is changing. A lot. From personalisation and localisation to mobile search and voice commerce, all…
Do you remember when the world went wild over the augmented reality (AR) game Pokémon Go? It was the first time we saw the mainstream potential of AR and how it could affect the retail industry. Businesses quickly jumped on the AR bandwagon by paying for “Lures” to add Pokémon to their radius, and ultimately bring consumers closer to their businesses…