These are unprecedented times. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has caused havoc around the world. Everyone and everything has been impacted. There was has been widespread disruption across industries. Retail eCommerce, the industry that we have been an active part of for almost 17 years, has changed dramatically. The graph below shows the impact on ecommerce due to the pandemic – 10 years’ growth in 3 months!

At NetElixir Retail Intelligence Lab we started aggregating real time ecommerce sales and online shopper behavior data in February 2020. Being the ecommerce growth partner for 120+ retailers in the US, we found ourselves right in the middle of all action. The massive ecommerce sales spikes, the flooding in of new to online shoppers, the frequent product inventory outages and shipping delays caused by highly unpredictable demand… we witnessed everything first hand. We also saw massive shifts in online consumer behavior – website visitors purchasing a lot quicker than normal, the types of purchases made by first time shoppers, the shifting of consumer product preferences as the pandemic dragged on, the emergence of mobile phones as the primary online purchase device… the list is long and fascinating.

We started sharing the key insights and trends through our bi-weekly webinars and often invited retail industry leaders to share their observations with our clients and partners. You can view the webinar videos here – https://www.netelixir.com/university/on-demand-webinars/. I am sure you will be as fascinated as we all have been to observe the trend shifts as you browse through the webinar videos chronologically. We have also been publishing regular insights on our company blog – https://www.netelixir.com/blog.

Through my blogposts here my attempt is to dive deeper into the data insights and ask WHY. I will try to not just share my point of view but also invite some of my friends from the retail industry and academia to share their points of view as well. These are truly unprecedented times.. there are many micro-trends that are underway in every sphere of life. It is important to not just identify these but also discuss the underlying forces that maybe driving these trends and debate about the future implications that they may have on retail, ecommerce and online shopper behavior.

I am writing this first post 2 days prior to the Thanksgiving Day. Unfortunately, Thanksgiving celebrations will be muted due to the pandemic restrictions. It is my belief that this year, Thanksgiving will grow in importance as an online shopping day. Our analysis for 2019, shows that 13% of all Cyber 5 (Thanksgiving Day to Cyber Monday) ecommerce sales happened on Thanksgiving. We believe this year, that may well exceed 15% of total Cyber 5 ecommerce sales. Why will this shift happen and what does it mean for retailers? What are the underlying forces that are driving this shift? Through my next blogpost, I will try to address some of these questions and more.

Wish you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving!

Udayan Bose