Retail and eCommerce highlights last week include: Salesforce has announced new data cloud integrations with Google Display & Video 360 and LinkedIn. Bold Commerce has announced the launch of its dynamic payment feature for Bold Checkout. The new technology enables brands to expand the payment options they offer and manage the complexity of handling multiple payment options. The MACH Alliance has surpassed 100 members with eight new joiners spanning membership categories. Glassbox has published the results of a new consumer shopping survey, “Digital Holiday Shopping Experiences: Expectations vs. Reality.” The results showcase how the consumer shopping experience is evolving for digital and mobile channels.
Qogita wins €80 million Series B round led by Dawn Capital to become the Amazon of wholesale procurement
Qogita – the platform making wholesale procurement as simple as shopping on Amazon – is emerging from stealth and announced it has raised €80 million in Series B funding led by Dawn Capital. The round, which included participation from previous investors including Series A lead Accel, and Seed co-leads LocalGlobe and Bessemer Venture Partners, brings the total raised by the company to €119 million. The funding will be used to invest in product development and category expansion.
Qogita was born out of the realisation of the complexities of trying to source wholesale products as a small e-commerce business. The time that retailers should focus on developing the store and growing the brand is instead often channelled into trying to build relationships with suppliers, negotiating to get the best deals and navigating the complex requirements of supply chain management.
Qogita was founded in 2021 to solve this. The all-in-one wholesale eCommerce platform connects buyers and sellers, with a focus on the health and beauty sector. The platform optimises procurement, making it as simple as buying products at Amazon. Buyers, usually small and medium-sized retailers, select their desired items, choosing from popular brands, whilst Qogita finds the best available prices for each product, removing the need to compare deals and negotiate with different sellers. All customers need to do is check out and use the platform to keep track of orders, with Qogita taking care of the whole purchase, including shipping and delivery.
Qogita’s algorithm-based allocation system is what sets it apart from 99% of marketplaces that have trouble adding significant value after the initial discovery phase.
Its allocation logic matches buyers’ carts to the optimal mix of sellers, which is impossible to replicate manually, in terms of cost-savings, quality and speed of delivery. This is because, for the very same order, the optimal mix of sellers is different every minute, as prices, quantities and other parameters constantly change.
ShopBack and Runa partner to offer cashback rewards to consumers
Runa, the global digital value infrastructure for instant B2C payments, announced its expanded partnership with ShopBack, the largest cashback and rewards platform in Asia-Pacific, offering Australians cashback on purchases at more than 4,000 online, in-store and gift card brands, including household brands like Chemist Warehouse, Amazon, The ICONIC, and eBay.
The global cashback market is set to reach $5.7 billion by 2031, and its rising popularity is due to its ability to give consumers greater control over their finances, allowing them to counteract rising costs through the use of instant, easy rewards. ShopBack has given over
$190M of cashback to Australian consumers, and Runa has extensive experience of driving innovation in the cashback industry through its global network of over 2,500 merchants.
With Runa’s full-stack offering and expansion into the APAC region, businesses can integrate once and have the ability to send payouts to Australia and 35+ other countries. Global businesses will now be able to offer their customers an expanded range of payout types, including 29 payout types in Australia and 121 payout types in Singapore.
New research from Optimizely reveals a major gap in marketers’ 2024 personalisation planning
Despite Google’s announcement that it will begin phasing out support for third-party cookies in Chrome at the beginning of 2024, 63% of marketers still have no clear strategy for cookieless personalisation. That’s according to a survey from Optimizely that highlights the urgent need for marketers to reassess their personalisation strategies for 2024.
The research, which surveyed 100 UK marketing professionals across the UK, found that more than half (54%) also lack a clearly defined strategy for personalisation using first-party data. This indicates a critical gap in preparation for the post-cookie era, where personalised experiences will rely heavily on direct user interactions.
Currently, 83% of marketers feel that their current personalisation efforts are primarily based on assumptions about customers rather than data-driven insights. To prepare for the future, marketers will need to re-evaluate their personalisation technologies and transition from using third-party cookies to utilising first- and zero-party data.
This shift will require brands to securely manage and use the data that customers provide, which most marketers feel they can prepare for. The survey revealed that 73% of marketers believe privacy and personalisation can coexist – suggesting a growing awareness within the industry of the need to balance tailored experiences with robust privacy measures.
What is troubling, however, is that 74% of marketers express concerns about the obsolescence of their current personalisation technology – signalling the need for more reliable and privacy-conscious first-party data-based platforms.
Retail and eCommerce news from the week beginning 4 December 2023
