The Nordic e-commerce market continues to thrive, with consumers adapting to new trends driven by affordability, convenience, and sustainability. To learn which trends define the region, we are happy to share an insightful report from PostNord with you.

Understanding the Nordics

Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway each showcase unique online shopping behaviors yet share common themes, such as a focus on price sensitivity and growing interest in international marketplaces.

Economic and Geopolitical Influences

Lower interest rates have eased financial pressures, boosted purchasing power and resulted in a steady recovery across Nordic economies. However, geopolitical challenges like tariffs and supply chain disruptions persist, influencing costs and stock availability.

Key Consumer Trends

Cross-Border Shopping

Nordic consumers are increasingly shopping internationally, with 76% making cross-border purchases in the past year. China remains the top choice for low prices and diverse products, followed by Germany and Sweden. Popular categories include clothing, footwear, and electronics.

Sustainable and Circular E-commerce

Sustainability is gaining traction, with 29% of Nordic consumers purchasing second-hand items online in the past month. Younger consumers lead the shift toward sustainable practices, while a significant portion (14-20%) is willing to pay extra for eco-friendly deliveries.

Regional Insights

Sweden

• Consumer Behavior: Swedish shoppers prefer service points for delivery, emphasizing convenience and flexibility.
• International Shopping: 65% of Swedes shop abroad, favoring low-cost retailers like those in China.
• Sustainability: 32% shop second-hand monthly, reflecting a growing interest in circular commerce.

Denmark

• Delivery Preferences: Danes prioritize home delivery and service points, valuing flexibility.
• Sustainable Practices: While only 15% actively consider sustainability, 20% have paid extra for eco-friendly options.
• Cross-Border Trends: 80% shop abroad, with China and Germany among top destinations.

Finland

• Delivery Innovations: Parcel lockers dominate, offering flexibility and accessibility.
• Cross-Border Shopping: Finnish consumers heavily favor low-cost international marketplaces like Temu.
• Sustainability: While 22% shop second-hand, the willingness to pay for sustainable delivery is lower.

Norway

• Convenience Priority: Norwegians favor doorstep deliveries and are the most willing to pay for eco-conscious delivery options.
• Sustainability Leadership: 34% shop second-hand, the highest among the Nordics, and 31% have paid for sustainable deliveries.

Emerging Opportunities

Parcel Locker Adoption

PostNord has expanded its parcel locker network to over 6,000 units across the Nordics, significantly improving last-mile logistics. Innovations like outdoor lockers and customer-focused features, such as customizable locker height, are enhancing user experience.

Global Expansion

Companies like Nordic Nest Group highlight the potential of Nordic brands globally. Their focus on Scandinavian design and tailored e-commerce strategies has driven expansion into over 70 countries, offering a roadmap for businesses aiming to enter new markets.

Find out more by downloading the PostNord report!

The post E-commerce Trends in the Nordic Region: Autumn 2024 Highlights by PostNord appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

TikTok plans to launch Trendy Beat in the United States early next month. To pull it off, the shopping section within the app will showcase a product line of its own. This will allow the company to directly challenge Amazon, Shein, Temu, and other major e-commerce platforms.

The new online store will sell items such as toys and kitchen appliances, among other items, in the app. It will also have an e-commerce tab in TikTok Shop. This function allows companies, sellers, and influencers to sell their products through the social network.

Over the past few weeks, users in the United Kingdom have been testing this new in-app purchase feature within the TikTok app. This tool, known internally as Project S, has the official name Trendy Beat. 

TikTok Trendy Beat will bet on private-label products 

In this way, TikTok would be on its way to creating its own range of private-label products in the style of Amazon's Amazon Essentials. It has a system of manufacturing and promoting its range of best-selling items. All these items, initially, would be shipped from China.

For the time being, this tab is in the testing phase. The company's goal is to improve the experience of its community.

TikTok is changing its e-commerce strategy. It is still in the early stages in the United States. The company has been testing TikTok Shop since last November, which has yet to be as successful as it had hoped. This is probably why the platform waited to test Trendy Beat in the U.S. market.

This social network has 1.052 million monthly active users and was one of the most downloaded apps in 2022 (2 billion downloads in 2020, and in Q3 2022, it surpassed 3 billion). Figures that are noticed by brands that are beginning to use this tool as a new sales channel.

The post TikTok plans to launch Trendy Beat in the USA appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

Today, we want to take a look at the top 7 trends for online retail that will define the future of the sector during 2023. 

These trends go from logistic variations to new sales channels, and from payment methods to new online search mechanisms. 

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Our goal is to provide your brand with a clear path toward the imminent future of online retail, and help your business remain relevant and profitable. 

Let us begin! 

Online retail keeps growing

The first thing to understand regarding future trends in the online retail industry, is the fact that online retail keeps growing. 

Even in the midst of the post-pandemic and wartime crisis, online retail is forecast to grow: Total retail sales worldwide in 2022 are expected to come in at $29 trillion—a 4.7 percent annual increase. 

This follows a 12.1 percent surge from 2020 to 2021 when total retail sales increased from $24.7 trillion to $27.7 trillion. 2021's global retail sales figures actually far exceeded market expectations, according to a Statista and Oberlo joint report. 

So, regardless of the exact number, all sources and major players in e-commerce retail agree on this: the business is booming. 

Under this scenario, the trends are more innovative, less impactful in cost reduction, and more oriented toward new and flashy ways to achieve increased profitability and brand recognition.  

Top online retail trends to watch in 2023

Now that we understand the current online retail scenario, we can dive head-on into the most interesting and dominating trends that all major brands are already pushing into the online retail global market. 

Omnichannel is now a standard for retail 

Before COVID-19 having omnichannel capacities was more like a boost than a must. Now it's the opposite. The pandemic showed us that you need to be available for your potential customers in all possible formats and channels. 

This means that having e-commerce with social media selling capabilities, and also a physical sale point, or pick-up point, is fast becoming the ideal scenario.

To be precise, in our post-pandemic world you will notice an increase in services like BOPIS (buy online, pick up in-store), curbside pickup, and BORIS (buy online, return in-store). Or any other permutations of physical and digital sales and pick-up. 

So, if you are online, think about venturing a bit into the physical. And if you are a brick-and-mortar traditional retail, you better jump into the digital as fast as you can. Because if something was proved in 2019, is that the future is unfathomable. 

Social commerce is here to stay 

Using social networks and media to sell products or services has become an industry standard. 

This is a reality that many small entrepreneurs still need to cope with. Because honestly, selling using Facebook or Instagram is not simple at all. 

In fact, social media are so polluted with information, comments, and tons and tons of content, that finding your place as a brand is sometimes a daunting and challenging task. 

Yet, it is a task you need to face… and conquer. So, if you have not touched your social media accounts in a while, or if you think they are ‘not meant for selling’ please take a deep breath and look at what Youtube, Meta, and all major brands are regarding social media. It will surprise you! 

AI/ML increased focus 

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning solutions AI/ML are growing trends in all sectors of human activity. 

In our online retail universe is no different, both AI and ML are extensively being used and tested in all fields of e-commerce retail.  

To put some examples, AI is used to do a lot of things; from predicting possible behavioral changes in our customers to fostering the sales of recurrent products, or even channeling our customers' journey by creating customer-centric search results in the e-commerce native search engines. 

This means that an IA could, to put it simply, offer different results for two different persons that visit an online fashion brand e-commerce, based on what the IA has learned - or has been programmed to understand - from previous visitors and from the actions of the current ones.

Thus, showcasing for client A a list of potential results, that better matches his buyer persona, and that doesn’t necessarily match the list of results from client B. 

And on the Machine Learning front, pricing optimization, omnichannel marketing prediction, and optimization and logistics prediction are just but a few of the current applications worldwide of ML to improve online retail brands. 

Augmented reality (AR): the newest online retail trend

Augmented reality is fast becoming a standard format for companies to offer their goods and showcase their products. 

The concept is simple: using a smart device you can see how the product fits your body or any given spot in your house, before buying it. 

This simple idea allows for a lot of quality-of-life research in the eyes of the consumer. Do you want to buy Ikea furniture but you are not sure how it will look in your living room? AR it into place using your phone and decide. 

You can even change the color, design, or style of any given product, and try them out virtually, in ways that were just impossible a few years ago. 

Visual search e-commerce

Visual search is a way to search for content using images as inputs, instead of text. Currently the most famous of these systems is Google Image Search. So it is something you can pretty much go right now and test. It's a working technology that will keep on growing. 

The way it works is that the user has the option to upload an image to a visual search engine or application and find related content. The results are also displayed in photographic format.

Artificial intelligence has managed to generate algorithms that include visual recognition. They have the ability to identify which elements appear in the photo uploaded by the user, compare them with the images indexed in their database, and offer a list of results that match the characteristics that appear in the image.

With this technology as a base, many companies and brands are already experimenting with the possible lead generation and sales, derived from image searches. And if we combine this with the upcoming smart glasses technology…. oh boy we have a powerful marketing tool! 

Imagine walking down a street in Paris, seeing a purse or dress that caught your attention, using your smartglasses to search for the image you are seeing in real life, getting to the store, and buying it… all in the blink of an eye. 

Livestream e-commerce and live shopping 

The latest trend from Asia is live shopping and Livestream e-commerce. This trend consists in showcasing a product or service via live streaming, generally using a social media platform like TikTok or Youtube. 

This streaming is done - most of the time - by an influencer. So it is a pretty powerful marketing tool: combining the engagement power of a “social media star” with the remarkable and well-documented ‘impulsive shopping boost’ that live broadcasting has. 

 And we could spend a year talking about this phenomenon where many, many things come into play: herd mentality marketing techniques, start and influencer power, social media impulsive behavior triggers, and so on and so forth. 

Suffice it to say, that Livestream e-commerce or live shopping is a really powerful marketing tool and for sure, a trend we will see increasingly during 2023.  

Voice commerce: Hey Google!

Voice commerce is the possibility for a user to make online purchases using only voice and a compatible smart device, such as a cell phone, speakerphone, or virtual assistant.

Like its counterpart visual search e-commerce, voice commerce allows a user to search for any given result using voice commands and inside a search engine that allows voice search and results. 

Perhaps some of the most well-known examples of voice search engines are Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, Cortana by Microsoft, and Google Assistant.

So far, companies have begun experimenting with specific voice SEO. Techniques aimed at achieving the almost impossible feat of ranking your brand or product as the single result for any given voice search. 

Yes, you read it correctly: the single result. Here lies the main issue regarding voice commerce and the reason why we have left this trend as our last one: you can only get one result per query with voice commerce. 

This means that actually ranking in the first position for the keyword or phrase you want, is mandatory. Otherwise, customers won't even know you are there. Of course, this will - in due time - change. Search engines will most likely increase voice results, or find their way around to provide more possible answers - some of them are already experimenting with this - but so far, is a gray area and really complex SEO scenario. 

Yet, voice commerce has incredible untapped potential, especially for local commerce. Imagine driving around town, and feeling the need for some spicy burritos. So you talk to your navigation system in your car, and it offers you the nearest and best-ranked Mexican restaurant close to your GPS location. Do you see the potential? 

All in all, if you wish to remain relevant in 2023 in the complex and growing field of online retail, we strongly recommend you check out all these trends and join Cross Border Magazine to keep track of all things e-commerce related! 

The post Top 7 trends for online retail on 2023 appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

When compared to last year’s findings, the report reveals a new and exciting context for global cross-border trade. The compound annual growth rate predicted for the next three years for cross-border e-commerce is now 17%, whereas it stands at just 12% for e-commerce overall. Also, over the past 12 months, merchants’ attitudes towards cross-border e-commerce have become more positive, with 50% of respondents agreeing and 31% strongly agreeing that cross-border e-commerce is profitable.

If last year mobile commerce was considered to be the biggest cross-border e-commerce growth factor, this year the main driver merchants pointed out was the accelerated development of online marketplaces. 39% of the world’s entire e-commerce market will be controlled by marketplaces by 2020.

The research also discusses a few regulatory items introduced by the European Union that pose major challenges, specifically for international marketplaces. More precisely, the new Payment Services Directive (PSD2) to be introduced from January 2018, requires all merchants operating under a marketplace business model to acquire a payment institution license. The costs and efforts attributed to getting such license will have a massive impact on the business activity of merchants, and the most preferred solution is to partner with a compliant solution provider.

Furthermore, the latest consumer technology trends such as VR/AR, data science, blockchain technology, artificial intelligence and machine learning together with the Internet of Things (IoT), enable merchants to reach their cross-border customers in a way that was never possible before. Consumers have higher expectations in terms of shopping experience, pushing merchants to constantly reinvent their e-commerce strategies.

Download the full report here.

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