Consumer Analytics

Ottawa, Canada – The Shopify e-commerce platform is expanding a beta test of the Facebook “buy” button with select U.S. retailers, by invite only. Facebook began piloting the buy button, which lets desktop or mobile consumers click the “buy” call-to-action button on ads and page posts to purchase a product directly from a business, without leaving Facebook, in July 2014.

Shoe Carnival is planning to open smaller stores to leverage untapped markets in smaller communities, as well as the company's omnichannel capabilities.

New York — If credit card issuers stopped offering rewards, a slight majority of American credit cardholders wouldn’t change their spending habits. According to a new Bankrate.com survey, 51% of U.S. credit card holders say they would keep using the card the same way they did previously.    Another 26% would use the card less often and 19% would stop using it entirely.  

New York — Internet ad revenues hit a record-breaking $13.3 billion in the United States in the first quarter of 2015, up 16% over the year-ago period, according to the latest IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report figures released today by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and  PwC US.  

San Jose, Calif. — The New York attorney general’s office has reportedly notified eBay Inc. and PayPal Inc. that their revised user agreements may raise issues related to consumer protection regulations. According to the New York Times, the concern regards both companies requiring permission to contact users by phone for reasons including offers and promotions, surveys and debt collection.  

By Joe Dalton    As technologies advance, social channels proliferate, and consumers become more plugged into digital marketing, personalization and contextualization is becoming the key to connecting with customers. While consumers build their online identities simply by using their devices for everything from browsing to averting traffic, they leave trails of their preferences, behavior, and values that retailers can draw upon to appeal to the interests of each individual customer.   

E-commerce traffic increased 18% in the first quarter, according to the latest Shopping Index from Demandware.

The report measures digital commerce growth and identifies the trends driving that growth based on analysis of same site activity over time. The latest Demandware Shopping Index reveals that shopper attraction, which measures the number of shoppers, was up 18% in the first quarter of 2015 over the first quarter last year and drove 83% of the digital commerce growth.

London, U.K. — Honest Cafe, an automated coffee house chain in London, is using IBM Watson Analytics to unearth client insights to help determine everything from coffee products and pricing, to marketing and promotions. Honest Cafe is a new venture from Revive Vending where three cafes currently in operation, and four more planned, are all unmanned.