2022 E-commerce Predictions Series: Change Continues Its Relentless March

2021 may have been the year of “who knows” for e-commerce, but 2022 is coming with a much sharper focus. While the pandemic refuses to recede in view, its impact on people, shopping, and technology has become increasingly clear. Last year, we saw a great leap forward in both e-commerce adoption and preferences, and 2022 looks to be a year in which big, structural changes will follow.

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For several years, brands have been taking advantage of the sophisticated architecture of Amazon and other marketplaces to reach customers around the world. In 2021, a wave of brand aggregators saw an opportunity to snap up and consolidate many of them. For those who remain independent, an increasingly mature service provider industry is providing avenues to professionalize their businesses and accelerate their growth.

Expect 2022 to see these trends play out in full. As part of that, a number of trends will either add fuel to the fire or put the brakes on quickening growth. Key trends to watch include:

Power to the people. The most unexpectedly disruptive force in the past year has been the labor market. Key players in the supply chain have taken their workers for granted for too long, but a new “take this job and shove it” mentality has forced them to rethink their approach. This year, we will see innovative efforts to provide environments in both manufacturing and distribution that workers will embrace. While wages and benefits will help, the companies that are most creative in supporting their people will see the greatest success.

Consumers will remain faithless. During the pandemic, people were often unable to find their favorite brands on their preferred platforms. In response, they’ve become adept at checking multiple apps and websites to find what they’re looking for — even if it comes from an entirely new source. Brands and retailers can find both risks and opportunities in this faithlessness, but to do so, they’ll need to focus on providing the best customer experiences they can.

Control is the new battleground. In 2022, brands will increasingly seek to wrest control of their customer experiences away from marketplaces and other retailers. The big question they face, however, is what to do with that control if and when they get it? Merely providing a similar experience to Amazon and its competitors will not be enough. To be successful, brands need to build long-term loyalty by providing customers with something of value their customers can’t get anywhere else.

The rise of multimarket. Amazon is still by far the dominant online marketplace on much of the planet. However, vulnerabilities have appeared in its armor: struggles with the labor market, constrained supply chains, and limits on inventory capacity. Even though other marketplaces, notably Walmart, still lag behind, they are catching up. For brands, this offers a new imperative: think multimarket. Make sure you still tend to the all-important store on Amazon but start checking other options.

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Retargeting is so 2021. Those ads that chase us around the Internet? They’ll still be there in 2022, but just because you can do them doesn’t mean you should. It’s a better idea to make sure your advertising is absolutely solid on the platforms where your people are most likely to buy your products — think sponsored brand or sponsored product ads instead of DSP. Once consumers head off-platform to watch videos or read the news, they’re far less engaged. Be mindful of their mindset and advertise accordingly.

A year of consolidation. After billions of dollars of mergers and acquisitions in the e-commerce industry this year, you don’t need to be Nostradamus to predict that such moves will continue. In 2022, aggregators will continue to snap up brands and repackage them for sale but will also need help with operations. Service providers will fill operations gaps for aggregators and build full-service solutions that support brands at every level of development. This year, we should see the rise of the everything-partner, able to provide support starting at product development and strategy and staying all the way through the supply chain.

Put simply, 2021 has seen incredible strides in e-commerce adoption and maturation globally. 2022 will be no different, so it’s a good idea for brands and investors to assess how far they’ve come and started making plans for a bright online shopping future. It’s a good time to be in the e-commerce world, if you can just manage to keep up.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]