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Amazon is fighting back with ultra-low-price strategies. The ecommerce giant launched an 鈥淎尘补锄辞苍 Haul鈥� section on its UK app in May 2025, featuring thousands of fashion, home, and lifestyle items for 拢20 ($25) or less (most under 拢10).

AI search boosts discovery, lags in driving sales. Young consumers are embracing genAI for product discovery. A fifth (20%) of Gen Z shoppers are using AI to discover new products, compared with just 2% of baby boomers, per Salesforce.

The insight: Amazon is trying to figure out how it can benefit from the AI agentic boom without giving shopping agents unfettered access to its site, according to a report by The Information. Our take: While agentic commerce is far from the norm for the time being, retailers need to be prepared. That鈥檚 especially true for companies with retail media businesses, given the potential for AI agents to upend their ability to monetize their sites.

That compares with just 10% who visit Amazon first, and 12% who start their searches on TikTok. Google鈥檚 lead is narrower but still substantial when it comes to price comparison: 40% of the 16-to-24 age group turn to the company first, followed by 25% for Amazon and 12% for Walmart. More worrying for Amazon is Google鈥檚 rising appeal among Gen Z shoppers who already know what they want to buy.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on Tuesday sent a memo to employees that AI will deliver "efficiency gains" enabling workforce reductions. Lowe鈥檚 CEO Marvin Ellison echoed that sentiment the same day, warning that corporate jobs are more at risk than frontline roles as AI adoption accelerates, per Business Insider.

Retail ended 2024 on a high note as mobile shopping drove ecommerce sales and stores staged a comeback. Will the 2025 holiday season be as fruitful?

That鈥檚 not as easy as it sounds, because Walmart, Costco, and Amazon are some of the largest mass merchants in Canada. Many retailers have included 鈥淏uy Canadian鈥� signage in product aisles, flagging domestic goods. Loblaw has included symbols denoting products with prices affected by tariffs.

Cross-border sales are rising in Europe as more people shop on foreign websites, seeking value and variety. Retailers selling ultra-cheap goods from China dominate sales, but there are also opportunities for retailers selling goods from the US and Europe. This deck will:.

The insight: Lululemon athletica鈥檚 international business is growing by leaps and bounds鈥攚hich is helping to offset the impact of strategic misfires on US sales. International net revenues rose 33% YoY in Q3; comparable sales increased 25% YoY. By contrast, net revenues in the Americas rose by just 2% YoY, while comparable sales contracted by 2%.

Pulling forward inventory: To hedge against uncertainty, major players from Amazon to VF Corp. to Urban Outfitters are stocking up, likely pushing their inventory growth ahead of sales in Q2. The strategy echoes the surge in March imports, which helped drive a 14% jump in the US trade deficit before the administration鈥檚 鈥淟iberation Day鈥� tariff announcement, per the US Commerce Department.

Amazon shrugs off economic pressure: The retail giant says it hasn鈥檛 seen any meaningful average selling price increases, nor have shoppers pulled back spending.

In the US, sales via social commerce are on track to exceed $100 billion by 2026, fueled by increasing buyers and spend-per-buyer, particularly on TikTok Shop. Amazon has partnered with social platforms, seeking to ease the path to purchase for products discovered on social that can be fulfilled by the company.

Our take: Target鈥檚 latest membership update is unlikely to trouble Amazon or Walmart, but the prospect of saving money on same-day delivery from other retailers could convince previously skeptical shoppers to shell out $99 a year for the service.

Amazon launched shoppable ads on Prime Video and entered a partnership with TikTok to enable purchases of Amazon products via ads on the TikTok app. Walmart expanded its retail media offering to linear TV (using QR codes) through its partnership with NBCUniversal.

Agentic AI gains momentum: As Amazon, Walmart, eBay and others experiment with AI agents, retailers need to to figure out how to market to bots in addition to humans.

In our exclusive survey with ESW, data from shoppers in 18 countries reveals new twists in the path to purchase, the rising momentum of marketplaces, and the resilience of age-old fundamentals.