Amazon has spent $1.2 billion and employed over 15,000 people in 2022 to fight rising fraud in its online marketplace, according to the "Amazon Brand Protection Report" released this week. The company has boosted its efforts to fight fake reviews and counterfeit products to maintain trust with customers and vendors.
The employees dedicated to this assignment include machine learning scientists, software developers, and expert investigators. Amazon's investment is the latest effort by vendors and e-tailers to fix the problem of counterfeit products. The Power Tool Institute also warned this week of an influx of counterfeit batteries in the power tool industry.
Amazon reports a decrease in "bad actor" attempts to create new selling accounts, from 6 million attempts in 2020 to 2.5 million attempts in 2021 and 800,000 attempts in 2022. The number of valid notices of infringement submitted by brands in the Amazon Brand Registry also decreased by more than 35% from 2021. Amazon identified, seized, and disposed of more than 6 million counterfeit items in 2022.
According to a recent report by Fortune Business Insights, the global e-commerce packaging market is on the rise. In fact, it was valued at a whopping USD 43.10 billion, with projections indicating that it will grow to USD 66.51 billion by 2029, exhibiting a CAGR of 5.7% during the 2022-2029 period.
This impressive growth can be attributed to a plethora of factors, including the expansion of the e-commerce industry, growing disposable income, and rising smartphone users in emerging economies.
It's clear that the demand for e-commerce packaging is only going to increase in the coming years, and businesses must be prepared to meet this demand in order to remain competitive in the market.
Real-time data collection is becoming increasingly important for eCommerce businesses, according to a new white paper by Oxylabs. The report, which surveyed senior data decision-makers from 500 UK-based and 501 US-based eCommerce companies, found that 62% of respondents identified real-time data as a key goal for the coming year.
As companies look to gain more actionable insights, real-time web scraping is becoming essential for tracking competitors' websites and other online stores. The report also highlights the importance of external data gathering for market research purposes.
According to the report, US-based companies (43.91%) will focus more on collecting and utilizing external data compared to non-US counterparts (37.20%). Non-US counterparts, in contrast, will pay closer attention to managing existing infrastructure (56.09% vs 44.49%).
Meanwhile, UK-based companies will focus more on real-time acquisition (65.94%) and data quality assurance (28.35%) compared to US-based companies (58.28% and 18.96% respectively). These differences highlight unique web scraping environments in each region, as each faces distinct issues.
A new study by UBS predicts that over 50,000 retail stores in the US will close by 2028 due to rising operating costs and increased e-commerce sales. Specialty retailers, particularly clothing and consumer electronics stores, are expected to be hit the hardest.
This could represent a 5% reduction from the current count of almost a million stores and potentially open up $285 billion worth of consumer spending for surviving stores to compete for. Big box retailers like Walmart, Costco, and Target are expected to benefit, while smaller chains and independent retailers will likely continue to decline in store counts.
According to UBS, larger companies are better positioned to absorb the impact of rising costs and benefit from big investments in fulfilling digital orders, while smaller companies struggle to keep up. UBS also projects that e-commerce sales will rise to 26% of total retail sales by 2028, with nearly one in four digital transactions fulfilled by ship-from-store or pick-up options.
If retail sales growth falls short of 4% per year, UBS estimates that the number of closures could reach 70,000 or more, but stronger sales growth would keep more stores open.
The Brazilian government has announced the end of a tax exemption on international orders up to $50, which had been widely used for sales made by foreign companies. The revenue service clarified that the exemption never applied to e-commerce and that all international orders will now be subject to a 60% tax on their value.
The Brazilian government is set to impose taxes on e-commerce giants such as AliExpress, Shein, and Shopee, in an effort to combat unfair competition from Asian companies and generate new revenue for the government. The measure is expected to benefit local retailers and generate 7 to 8 billion reais in revenue.
