Articles about Retail

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are unlocking new opportunities for brands and retailers to push the boundaries of online shopping and customer experience. As global retailers are expected to spend $7.3 billion on AI this year and the global market for AI software is expected to reach $126 billion by 2025, AI presents many benefits and opportunities within the context of the eCommerce industry including more targeted marketing and advertising, increased customer retention, efficient sales processes, better product development, and innovative shopping experiences.

Here are eight applications of AI in eCommerce that can take both backend processes and customer-facing experiences for brands to the next level. 

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Big retail businesses can have hundreds of TLS/SSL certificates identifying specific internet-connected devices, but many lack an organization-wide framework for managing them.

In the run up to the busiest shopping period of the year, new research from BitSight finds that 75 percent of the retail sector is at heightened risk of ransomware due to poor TLS/SSL configuration management.

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A new report from Imperva suggests that the 2021 holiday shopping season faces disruption by cybercriminals looking to create chaos and take advantage of the global supply chain crisis.

Bot attacks against retail sites have risen by 13 percent in 2021, with 57 percent of attacks recorded on eCommerce websites this year carried out by bots. In comparison, bad bots made up just 33 percent of the total attacks on websites in all other industries in 2021.

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When it comes to accusations of fixing search results, it is usually the likes of Google in the firing line, but documents seen by Reuters show that Amazon has engaged in such activities.

The news agency obtained thousands of internal Amazon documents cited as evidence that the company not only "ran a systematic campaign of creating knockoffs", but also that it was "manipulating search results to boost its own product lines".

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There is no doubt that the coronavirus pandemic has changed the landscape of the retail sector. Social distancing regulations and civil anxiety surrounding the virus mean that physical stores do not offer the same browsing experience as we would usually expect. Meanwhile, a growing reliance on online shopping has been boosted by instructions to remain at home as much as possible.

The impact of COVID-19 and our new shopping behaviors have a profound effect on retailers. Changed buying experiences, falling and rising sales, and new consumer demands have defined an adverse year in retail. Here, we look at how customers and businesses have been affected by these changes.

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A side effect of the pandemic over the last year has been that online shopping has boomed. But a new study from Veracode reveals that 76 percent of apps in the retail and hospitality sector contain flaws, with 26 percent having high-severity issues that require urgent attention.

Compared to other industries, however, retail and hospitality ranks second-best for overall fix rate with half of flaws remediated in just 125 days, nearly one month faster than the next-fastest sector. While this may seem lengthy, half of flaws across all industries remain unfixed for much longer and some may never be fixed at all.

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2020 has been a boom year for eCommerce, with average daily transaction volumes equal to 88 percent of the volume achieved during Black Friday weekend 2019 according to digital trust and safety specialist Sift.

It also finds the average attempted fraudulent purchase value has risen to over $700 from October through November 2020, a 70 percent year-on-year increase compared to the same period in 2019.

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A new threat intelligence report from Imperva Research Labs looks at the varying cybersecurity attack risks facing the retail industry.

The findings suggest peak levels of traffic will be seen throughout the holiday shopping season as large numbers of consumers turn to online channels to purchase goods. Shortly after stay-at-home orders were issued, web traffic to retail sites spiked by as much as 28 percent over the weekly average.

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2020 has been nothing short of challenging for businesses and people alike across the globe. Although nearly every company has felt a blow to economic forecasts, they are now pivoting strategies in order to return profitability to the bottom line.

But there is a shining light for retail at the end of the year. The upcoming holiday shopping season has traditionally been a huge source of revenue as consumers have historically spent, individually, upwards of $1,000 each year -- summing up to a total of billions of dollars spent each week from Thanksgiving through Christmas. However, with the pandemic continuing to change traditional consumer shopping behaviors, and local legislation differing across the country as to when stores can have any or full capacity, this year’s holiday shopping season will also look drastically different. In order to turn a profit, retailers need to adapt to the new reality and ensure that the in-store experience is as safe and efficient as possible.

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A new study shows a 29 percent increase in suspected online retail fraud during the start of the 2019 holiday shopping season compared to the same period in 2018, and a 60 percent increase over the same period from 2017 to 2019.

The findings from iovation, the fraud prevention arm of TransUnion, are based on the online retail transactions analyzed for its e-commerce customers between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday over the last three years.

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Some 72 percent of retailers globally have experienced a cyberattack, with 61 percent experiencing one in the last year, yet 50 percent don't have a response plan in place to deal with data breaches.

This is among the findings of a new study carried out by the Ponemon Institute for Keeper Security, which also shows the average cyberattack on a retailer involving the loss of customer/employee data results in 7,772 individual records lost or stolen, with an average price tag of $1.9M from the disruption of normal operations.

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Online fraud increased 30 percent overall in the third quarter of this year and bot-driven account registration fraud is up 70 percent as cybercriminals test stolen credentials in advance of the peak holiday retail season.

These are among the findings of the latest Fraud and Abuse report from Arkose Labs, its analysis of over 1.3 billion transactions spanning account registrations, logins and payments, reveals that one in five account openings were fraudulent.

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As the holiday season approaches and there's a consequent spike in the amount of money spent online, retail cybersecurity comes under the spotlight.

Bugcrowd is releasing its State of Retail Cybersecurity report that explores the vulnerabilities found among retailers over the last year. Among the key findings is that crowdsourced security adoption increased by 137 percent year on year.

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US retailers are under siege as nearly two thirds (62 percent) report experiencing a data breach and over a third (37 percent) say they were breached in the past year, according to the latest report produced by IDC for Thales.

This high rate of data breaches comes amidst a decline in the rate of growth in security spending. Less than two thirds (62 percent) say that they are increasing spending this year compared to 84 percent last year, yet nearly all (96 percent) of the retailers surveyed claimed they use sensitive data within digitally transformative environments.

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Thanks to the huge volume of stolen credentials now available online, credential stuffing has become a major issue for the retail industry.

A new report from edge platform specialist Akamai shows that hackers directed credential abuse attempts at retail sites more than 10 billion times from May to December last year.

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