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Amazon’s physical store experiment
One shopping app to rule them all
Salesforce boosts B2B commerce with AI-driven upgrades
Revolutionizing eCommerce returns: The ReturnBear Story
Critical Magento flaw exploited
Amazon’s physical store experiment
Amazon’s foray into physical stores began humbly with a small bookshop in Seattle. Despite acquisitions like Whole Foods and innovations such as Amazon Go, their physical retail strategy remains experimental.
Recent closures of stores like Style and 4-Star underscore this uncertainty. Even their pioneering cashier-less technology is facing challenges, with reports of removal from some Fresh stores. CEO Andy Jassy expresses satisfaction, but a closer look reveals slower expansion compared to their online infrastructure growth.
2022’s significant store closures led to over $1 billion in asset impairments, signaling potential cuts in the sector. The core issue lies in the disparity between Amazon’s online strengths—affordability, speed, and variety—and the challenges of replicating them in physical stores.
High-end offerings at Whole Foods and limited options at Go and Fresh stores fail to mirror Amazon’s online allure. Efforts to introduce new features like palm payment scanners in Whole Foods aim to bridge this gap, but the quest for a distinct high-street identity persists.
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One shopping app to rule them all
PYMNTS Intelligence research, conducted in collaboration with PayPal, uncovers a compelling trend: a strong desire among consumers in the United States and Australia for a single, comprehensive online platform for their day-to-day activities.
Drawing from a survey of over 3,300 consumers, the study titled “Consumer Interest in an Everyday App” reveals that 79% of respondents express interest in such an app. Notably, around 70% of these individuals express a specific interest in using this unified platform for retail purchases.
Unified apps streamline the shopping experience, offering convenience and efficiency by consolidating various needs into one interface.
Retail giants like Amazon and Walmart, alongside delivery services like DoorDash and Instacart, are keen on positioning themselves at the forefront of consumers’ digital routines, capitalizing on this growing demand for seamless integration.
Salesforce boosts B2B commerce with AI-driven upgrades
Salesforce Inc. unveils a potent array of AI-driven upgrades aimed at enhancing B2B commerce, tapping into the soaring demand for streamlined digital transactions.
This week, the cloud-based CRM giant introduced five new offerings in its Salesforce Commerce Cloud platform, geared towards empowering B2B enterprise commerce companies to leverage AI and data for enhanced efficiency and revenue generation.
Key highlights include Einstein Copilot, a conversational AI assistant empowering B2B buyers with personalized recommendations and seamless interactions. Additionally, AI-driven goal-setting enables sellers to set growth targets, while generative SEO optimization enhances product visibility in search results.
These upgrades come in response to a robust 17% year-over-year growth in B2B ecommerce sales, as reported by Digital Commerce 360. Salesforce’s emphasis on AI aligns with its fiscal 2024 revenue surge to $34.86 billion, underscoring its commitment to innovation in B2B commerce technology.
Revolutionizing eCommerce returns: The ReturnBear Story
Global retail e-commerce sales are expected to exceed 6.3 trillion U.S. dollars in 2024, yet amidst this digital surge, the persistent headache of returns persists. Sylvia Ng, a former Shopify Executive, spotted this gap and founded ReturnBear, aiming to tackle the $800 billion worth of goods returned annually in North America alone.
“Everybody’s focused on getting products out, but what happens when you need to return them?” Ng pondered. Leveraging her tech expertise, Ng’s ReturnBear streamlines the returns process with a nationwide drop-off network, striving for a retail environment that’s not just efficient but environmentally responsible.
Efficiency, innovation, and sustainability are Ng’s hallmarks. With partnerships spanning major retailers like HBC and Staples, ReturnBear offers local drop-offs and consolidation hubs, bypassing the costly journey of cross-country returns. Furthermore, partnerships with eco-conscious brands like tentree and Boox promote circular economy practices, ensuring a greener future for e-commerce.
ReturnBear’s growth strategy prioritizes practicality and impact. Backed by significant investors like the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Ng emphasizes the value of every dollar invested, ensuring optimal resource utilization and customer service.
Ng’s journey is one of leadership and recognition, earning accolades like Top CEO by WeWorkingWomen and DMZ’s Women of the Year. Her message to aspiring leaders is clear: excellence in your role paves the way for others, especially women of color, to follow suit.
Critical Magento flaw exploited by threat actors
Security researchers have uncovered a significant exploit targeting a critical vulnerability in Magento, enabling threat actors to implant persistent backdoors into e-commerce websites.
This exploit centers around CVE-2024-20720, identified as an “improper neutralization of special elements,” allowing for arbitrary code execution. Thankfully, they released patches on February 13, 2024, to address this issue.
According to findings by Sansec, a cleverly crafted layout template within the database is being used to automatically inject malicious code, leveraging the Magento layout parser alongside the beberlei/assert package. The attack seamlessly executes whenever <store>/checkout/cart is accessed, exploiting a vulnerability tied to the checkout cart block.
The injected command-line utility ‘sed’ implants a code execution backdoor, deploying a Stripe payment skimmer to illicitly capture and transmit sensitive financial data.
This development coincides with the Russian government charging six individuals for their involvement in skimmer malware operations targeting foreign e-commerce entities since late 2017.
Signing off,
The Merchant @CartHustle