Consumer Analytics

Alibaba Holding Group Ltd. went on a buying spree at Zulily this month, but the Chinese Internet retailer wasn't buying baby shoes.

Alibaba purchased about 4.8 million class A shares in Zulily, about 17% of Zulily’s Class A stock. The stake, valued at more than $150 million, was disclosed in a securities filing that showed Alibaba this month spent $56 million buying Zulily stock as the U.S. company’s shares plunged following a disappointing earnings report.

Boston – With engaging the customer and managing the customer experience as top priorities for retailers, Boston Retail Partners’ 2015 CRM/Unified Commerce Survey indicates that 87% of retailers plan to use gamification to engage the customer within five years.

New York – Subscription retailers outpace e-commerce retailers and flash sale businesses by a long shot when it comes to a customer’s average numbers of orders in the span of a year. According to analysis of more than 10 million orders from 2.5 million unique customers by Retention Science, subscription retailers average 7.68 orders per customer in 12 months.

In contrast, e-commerce retailers only average 2.36 orders per customer in 12 months, and flash sale retailers only average 1.41 orders in that time span.

Both first-time and repeat customers were on the rise for Wayfair in the first quarter, suggesting the company is doing what it takes to grow into a powerful player in e-commerce.

By Nader Fathi

Seattle – Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Holding Group Ltd. has disclosed it holds a 9.3% stake in online retailer Zulily. Alibaba has purchased about 4.8 million class A shares for $56 million. This represents about 17% of Zulily’s Class A stock.

New York - Human error was the number one cause of data security incidents in 2014. According to a new report released by the Privacy and Data Protection Team at BakerHostetler, in the incidents that the firm worked on in 2014, employee negligence was responsible 36% of the time.

That was followed by theft by outsiders (22%), theft by insiders (16%), malware (16%) and phishing attacks (14%).Incidents were self-detected 64% of the time. Of the incidents reported by a third party, 27 % were due to theft.

The EMV liability shift occurs Oct 2015 and the United States expects six million to eight million EMV cards to be deployed by the end of the year. Payment solutions giant Ingenico Group believes many merchants will not be ready. (Ingenico Group is an active member of both the Smart Card Alliance and the EMV Migration Forum, which are cross industry organizations focused on easing the U.S. EMV implementation.)

Based on his expertise in EMV transitions, Ingenico Group North America president Thierry Denis offers the following observations and advice: