As February 2025 is approaching its end, it’s time to look back at the biggest news in the global e-commerce industry that shaped out this season.
Even though winter isn’t fully over yet, especially given the latest Arctic front descending on various U.S. regions, it’s already possible to distinguish several important newsmakers that have been shaping the world’s e-commerce market over the past several months.
High-speed Adoption of Generative AI
As global digital leaders are advancing their efforts in the efficient implementation of newly-emerging AI tech solutions in their business models, e-commerce conglomerates have been taking the same approach, particularly when it comes to customer recommendations, inventory and supply chain management, fraud detection and, certainly, customer support.
One of the most disruptive trends implies the launch of virtual AI shopping assistants, like Rufus by Amazon which was made available in beta across several countries in Europe in Q4 2024. While at this stage an assistant helps resolve somewhat a limited scope of tasks (e.g. get highly-personalized product recommendations and compare available options super-fast), chances are big that the next-gen agentic AI will be introduced by some of the top industry players in 2026 – 2027.
This will come in handy, if/when the traditional Holiday shopping seasons will be less centered in time, being replaced by the year-round online shopping patterns. At least this is what the latest FedEx e-commerce report unveils, indicating that over 15% already do their Holiday gift shopping throughout the entire year, and around 30% of them are planning to do so by 2026.
Another visible sphere of generative AI adoption is associated with AI-powered search capabilities (also called: generative search). In this respect, 25% of decision makers, who took part in the Algolia and Coleman Parkes Research survey back in 2024, for example, admitted their ambitious plans to introduce and/or enhance search options on their digital properties with AI in the short-term perspective. More importantly, some of those, like Walmart, for instance, have started to put their plans into action in time for this year’s Winter Holiday season i.e. by empowering their shopping associates with AI to help customers find what they need faster.
Clearly, the road to a full-scale global adoption of AI in online retail is still long, but it’s now indisputable that its efficient use can become a cornerstone of the transformative evolution of the global e-retail industry.
New E-commerce Regulation in Europe is Changing the Landscape, or Not?
Undoubtedly, the e-commerce industry in Europe has been growing at an accelerated pace over the past years, and this will hardly change in the mid-term perspective. In fact, according to Forrester, the value of the European e-commerce market is likely to grow by almost 45% in the next five years, reaching over 560,000,000,000 EUR in value by 2029, which will keep it in the field of interest for the leading e-commerce players in the months to come.
However, as it’s been made clear already, access to the European markets comes with a price, or better to say, a compliance checklist. In this respect, while the formerly introduced Digital Services Act (DSA) was primarily aimed at ensuring ethical approaches to platform designs and the protection of minors’ rights online, the new GPSR regulation, which came into effect in December 2024 is mostly focusing on the safety of products shipped to and sold online/offline in the EEA. In this respect, even though little time has passed since the latter, a recent inspection by the European market surveillance authorities in the Netherlands, for instance, has revealed that over 80% of products, sold online via Chinese platforms, like AliExpress and Temu, fail to meet regulatory requirements. This leaves the question open of what exactly the enforcement of GPSR will look like in 2025, especially given that some of the DSA norms, e.g. regarding the use of dark patterns in website/app design, are being continuously violated by major online platforms, yet no effective action against them has been taken yet.