Mike O'Brien
Mike O’Brien has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for … well, quite a while. At Multichannel Merchant he focuses on the world of direct-to-customer operations and fulfillment, editing MCM’s weekly O+F Advisor newsletter, and programs the annual Ecommerce Operations Summit conference. Previously Mike was a senior account executive for Marx Communications, a boutique public relations firm working with marketing and advertising technology companies. Other past work includes stints as a media relations consultant for a concert promoter, a marketing communications specialist for a pharma software firm, a research analyst covering corporate e-learning and a daily newspaper reporter on every beat imaginable – except sports.
Ecommerce prices increased 2.7% in January, reflective of overall inflation soaring in the broader economy, representing the 20th consecutive months of price gains online, according to the Adobe Digital Price Index, with e-grocery leading the way at a 5.8% gain. This was a slight dropoff from December, when online prices rose 3.1%.
It may be cold outside this Valentine’s Day, but things are starting to heat up for Ecommerce Operations Technology Summit 2022, to be held April 12-13 at the Hilton Orlando Lake Buena Vista, Disney Springs Area as we celebrate our 10th anniversary. Photo credit: Mick Haupt on Unsplash
Carro has created a spin on the traditional dropship model, allowing brands to easily network and cross-sell on other brands sites, while allowing social influencers to create their own marketplaces to further monetize large followings by offering recommended products on their own sites.
To help you address the growing ecommerce fraud threat, join Multichannel Merchant and Sift on Feb. 17 at 2 PM ET for a live webinar, “The Dark Web, Account Takeovers and You.” You’ll hear how leading retail and ecommerce companies are gaining competitive advantages by proactively preventing payment fraud, ATO and content abuse.
Underscoring the growing importance of sustainability and an environmental focus among values-conscious consumers when choosing brands, a new survey of shoppers in the U.S., the UK, Germany and France showed just how much these issues matter during the purchase decision process. Photo credit: Charles Etoroma on Unsplash
Walmart is the most popular destination for e-grocery ordering, according to a new survey by Chicory, cited by 36% of respondents, followed by Amazon at 23%, and Instacart a distant third at 10%. Target was cited by just under 10% of respondents, followed by Kroger at 7%, Albertson’s/Safeway (3%), Stop & Shop (2%) and Shipt (1%).
Abe Eshkenazi, CEO of the Association for Supply Chain Management (ASCM), said organizations need to take more of a long-term, systemic view vs. short-term fixes in response to a crisis. In this MCM podcast, Eshkenazi stresses the need for better visibility to read demand signals, and consideration of upstream/downstream effects. of efforts in any one node.
Amazon has increased the price of its Prime subscription program in the U.S. for the first time in four years, going up 17% from $119 to $139 per year, as the company faces the reality of massive logistics costs and a flattening of its ecommerce sales vs. the hypergrowth of the early pandemic period.
UPS saw package volume increase by a below-projection 0.2% in Q4, higher in the beginning and lighter at the end, as the Omicron surge, the pull-forward of shopper activity and retail inventory challenges weighed on the key metric, the company said in its fourth quarter call. Amazon represented 11.7% of its business in 2021.
The United Kingdom experienced the highest degree of ecommerce penetration in 2021, according to data from MasterCard, with the United States in the middle of the pack among 15 markets covered, and most countries seeing their peak in the early stages of the pandemic as stores locked down.