Today's Ecommerce Pulse
Target launches Circle Deal Days to challenge Amazon Prime Day
Target is launching its Target Circle Deal Days from June 23‑26, positioning the free‑to‑join program as a direct rival to Amazon Prime Day. New members who enroll between June 14‑22 receive a 15% discount on their first purchase, plus a free Starbucks coffee or Bullseye cookie on launch day, and a 50% discount on the first year of Target Circle 360.
Also developing:
By the numbers: FirstClub raises $55M Series B
E-Commerce Giant Flipkart Partners with India Post to Boost Last-Mile Parcel Delivery Service: Details
Flipkart announced a partnership with India’s Department of Posts to use its extensive last‑mile network for parcel delivery across urban, semi‑urban and rural areas. The deal promises faster, OTP‑verified deliveries, real‑time tracking and broader coverage of remote regions. Walmart’s CEO praised Flipkart’s 13‑minute delivery capability, noting the company now runs over 800 micro‑fulfilment centres. Flipkart also plans to scale to 1,200 dark stores and explore new services such as food delivery and ticketing.
Campaign Retail & Commerce Media Briefing: Maximising Agentic AI, Closed-Loop Outcomes & Creator-Led Commerce
Campaign Middle East’s Retail & Commerce Media 2026 briefing gathered nearly 200 marketers to examine AI‑assisted shopping, agentic commerce, retail‑media orchestration, and creator‑commerce convergence. Speakers warned that AI assistants now shortlist products, shrinking the shelf to a handful of recommendations and...
Social Commerce Won’t Scale the Way Brands Expect – Deloitte’s Dennis Ortiz Says Start With Creators
Deloitte partner Dennis Ortiz warns that U.S. social commerce will not scale like China’s live‑shopping model because major platforms lack end‑to‑end fulfillment infrastructure. His 2026 Digital Media Trends survey shows 70% of Gen Z and millennials discover products on social but...
Google’s AI Agentic Shift Redraws Hotel Distribution Landscape
At Google I/O 2026 the company launched Gemini 3.5 Flash, Gemini Spark autonomous agents and a Universal Commerce Protocol that embed AI‑driven booking tools directly into search. The move could upend legacy hotel distribution channels as 55% of search queries...
Costco Offers $20‑$40 Gift Cards to New Members in Q2 2026 Push
Costco Wholesale announced a limited‑time promotion that gives new Gold Star members a $20 digital Costco Shop Card and new Executive members a $40 card, effectively cutting first‑year fees to $45 and $90. The move follows a 13.6% jump in...
Walmart Q1 2027 Revenue Rises $10B, eCommerce Surges 26% Amid Cost Pressures
Walmart reported a $10 billion increase in constant‑currency revenue for Q1 2027, driven by 4.1% comparable sales growth and a 26% jump in enterprise eCommerce. The retailer warned that higher fuel costs and inflation could pressure pricing in the second half...
Digital Brands Group Partners with Renov AI to Accelerate Development of AI-Powered Tools Across Commerce and Brand Ecosystems
Digital Brands Group (DBG), a publicly traded apparel and e‑commerce operator, announced a strategic partnership with Renov AI, an MITACS‑backed artificial‑intelligence firm. Renov AI will supply engineering and research expertise to accelerate DBG’s AI‑powered suite, covering data intelligence, automation, and...
Delivering on Fulfilment Speeds and AI Experience - a Walmart Status Report From CEO John Furner
Walmart reported Q1 profit of $5.33 billion, an 18.8% year‑on‑year rise, on revenue of $177.8 billion. Global e‑commerce sales surged 26% while U.S. delivery volume grew 45%, with 36% of store‑fulfilled orders arriving in under three hours. The retailer says half of...
Walmart’s International Sales Growth in Q4 Driven by Flipkart, China Units
Walmart International posted an 18% year‑on‑year sales rise to $35.1 billion in Q4, driven largely by its Indian ecommerce arm Flipkart. Flipkart’s ecommerce volume jumped 27% and its advertising revenue surged 32%, while the quick‑commerce service Flipkart Minutes now fulfills orders...
Alibaba Deploys Qwen AI to Power Product Search Across 4 Billion Items on Taobao
Alibaba announced that its Qwen large‑language model is now embedded in the Taobao and Tmall apps, enabling shoppers to ask open‑ended questions and complete purchases without leaving the chat window. The integration covers more than 4 billion catalog items, marking the...
Walmart Q1 2027 Earnings Show 50% Marketplace Surge and AI‑Driven Growth
Walmart reported its Q1 2027 earnings on May 21, 2026, highlighting a near‑50% rise in U.S. Marketplace sales, a 100% jump in weekly active users of its AI shopping agent Sparky, and the deployment of about 7,200 price rollbacks. The...
Triple Whale Rolls Out Moby 2 AI Operating System for 60,000+ Ecommerce Brands
Triple Whale announced the general availability of Moby 2, its next‑generation AI operating system, now serving more than 60,000 ecommerce and retail brands. The platform adds autonomous execution tools to the company's measurement stack, aiming to shrink the gap between insight...
How to Build a Sales System for Your Artist Website
The article outlines a repeatable sales system for artists that treats a website as a timed storefront rather than a permanent shop. By releasing collections in limited‑time windows, artists generate urgency, collect email leads, and drive traffic with intensified social...
Walmart Delivery Can Now Reach 60 Percent of Americans in Under 30 Minutes
Walmart announced that its delivery network can now reach 60 percent of U.S. households in 30 minutes or less, leveraging its extensive store footprint. Store‑based delivery sales have more than doubled over the past two years, making sub‑hour fulfillment its fastest‑growing...
Amazon PPC for Margin Protection: 7 Fixes UK Sellers Should Make Before Scaling Spend
UK Amazon sellers often blame high PPC spend on bidding errors, but the real culprits are unclear margins, weak listing conversion, and sloppy campaign structure. The article outlines a seven‑step diagnostic that forces sellers to calculate true landed‑cost margins, tighten...
Debenhams Group Launches AI‑Driven Checkout on Meta for US Shoppers
Debenhams Group has rolled out an AI‑driven checkout experience inside Meta’s Facebook and Instagram apps for US shoppers of its youth‑fashion brands. Powered by PayPal’s Agentic Commerce Services, the pilot lets customers complete purchases without leaving the social platform, aiming...
Dassault Systèmes Launches AI‑Powered HomeByMe Kitchen Suite to Transform Retail Design
Dassault Systèmes introduced the HomeByMe Kitchen Expert Suite, an AI‑enabled, cloud‑based platform that unifies 3D kitchen design, sales management and manufacturer catalogues. The solution aims to streamline omnichannel workflows and lift web‑to‑store quote conversion rates for kitchen retailers.
StoreClaw Launches AI Growth Engine to Automate E‑commerce Acquisition, Conversion and Retention
StoreClaw introduced its AI Growth Engine, a cross‑platform SaaS solution that moves beyond suggestion‑only tools to execute acquisition, conversion and retention actions for e‑commerce sellers. The platform combines AI reasoning with pre‑built “Skills” that act as playbooks, giving merchants a...
Why the Future of Websites May Depend on AI
AI and blockchain are rapidly redefining how Shopify and DTC sites are built, secured, and personalized in 2026. AI tools now power product recommendations, chat support, dynamic pricing, and automated content creation, delivering measurable conversion lifts within weeks. Meanwhile, blockchain...
Web Scraping for E-Commerce: Use Cases, Data Sources, and How to Extract Product Data at Scale
Web scraping has become essential for e‑commerce firms seeking competitive intelligence, catalogue research, sentiment analysis, and stock monitoring. The guide outlines primary use cases, from price tracking on retailer sites to review mining on comparison platforms, and highlights high‑value targets...
Ecommerce Trends: Which Type of Online Retailer Is Growing Fastest in the 2020s?
Digital Commerce 360’s 2026 Top 1000 Report shows ecommerce sales reached $1.379 trillion in 2025, the fifth consecutive year above $1 trillion. Consumer Brand Manufacturers (CBMs) posted the highest five‑year CAGR at 9.3%, led by Apple, Dell and Lululemon. Web‑Only retailers followed closely...
ASOS Launches AI Stylist on ChatGPT, Adding Video‑powered Outfit Recommendations
ASOS has integrated its AI Stylist into ChatGPT, offering UK and US shoppers real‑time outfit suggestions with video and livestream previews. The move follows a 52% cut in operating losses to £100.9 million (≈$126 million) and signals a deeper push into conversational...
Klarna Debuts ChatGPT Shopping App with Live Prices, Tapping AI‑Driven Commerce
Klarna rolled out the Klarna Shopping Search app inside ChatGPT, letting users ask natural‑language queries and receive live product listings, prices and availability from over 100 million items. The move targets AI‑generated traffic that grew nearly 700% during the 2025 holiday...
David’s Bridal Is Ready to Help Couples Budget Their Wedding
David’s Bridal has added a free AI‑driven budgeting feature to its Pearl Planner platform, letting couples input budget, location and guest count to receive real‑time cost breakdowns. The tool allocates funds based on user priorities and regional market data, offering...
AI Commerce Scorecard: 5 Signals That Tell You If Your Store Is Actually Ready to Sell in ChatGPT, and Google...
Shopify’s Agentic Storefronts toggle placed two million stores in AI assistants’ discovery pool, but only a fraction are actually shortlisted by ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, or Microsoft Copilot. A new five‑signal scorecard—product data extractability, review density and recency, policy extractability, answer‑ready...
Manhattan Associates Unveils AI‑Driven Solution Design Studio to Speed Ecommerce Supply‑Chain Setup
Manhattan Associates introduced Solution Design Studio, an AI‑powered platform that translates natural‑language blueprints into live supply‑chain configurations. The tool promises to shrink implementation cycles from months to minutes, targeting warehouse and transportation managers rather than IT specialists.
Shopify Collects Tax, but Compliance Remains Your Responsibility
Most DTC founders think Shopify handles their sales tax. It doesn't. What Shopify actually does: - Collects tax at checkout (sometimes) - Shows you a report What Shopify doesn't do: - Register you when you hit nexus in a new state - File...
E-Commerce's 10% Quarter Was Weaker Than It Looked
U.S. e‑commerce sales rose 9.8% year‑over‑year in Q1 2026, the strongest quarter in over two years, but almost half of the gain stemmed from higher prices rather than additional units sold. After stripping out the 1.9% rise in physical‑goods prices, real...
Here's How Your Favorite Stores Use Surveillance Data to Charge You More
The FTC’s January 2025 surveillance‑pricing study reveals that retailers are leveraging shoppers’ location data, browsing history, demographics and even in‑store camera footage to adjust prices on a per‑consumer basis. Both online platforms and brick‑and‑mortar stores use AI‑driven cameras, Bluetooth beacons and...
Why TikTok Shop Is Exposing the Brand Fundamentals Amazon Could Hide
TikTok Shop has shifted from a niche experiment to a core sales channel, prompting brands to reconsider their marketplace mix. Unlike Amazon, which acts as a search engine for intent‑driven shoppers, TikTok generates demand by embedding products in an entertainment...
Vipshop Q1 Profit Climbs 13.5% as E‑commerce Sales Rise 1.2%
Vipshop Holdings Limited reported first‑quarter profit of RMB2.206 billion ($309 million), up 13.5% year‑over‑year, while revenue grew 1.2% to RMB26.574 billion ($3.72 billion). The results underscore the Chinese flash‑sale platform’s ability to convert inbound traffic into higher sales, a key case study for B2C...
Google Launches Universal Cart Checkout and AI Ad Explainers to Take on Amazon
Google announced a native checkout system called Universal Cart and new AI‑generated ad formats at its Marketing Live summit. The rollout, backed by the Universal Commerce Protocol, partners with retailers such as Sephora, Target and Walmart to let shoppers complete...
Impulse Buying Dominance: Scarcity-Induced Sales in Live-Stream Commerce
Live‑stream commerce is leveraging scarcity‑driven promotions to spark impulse purchases, turning real‑time video into a high‑pressure sales floor. By limiting time or quantity, streamers create FOMO that pushes viewers to buy without rational deliberation. The tactic boosts conversion rates and...
YouTube Launches Shoppable Ads via Universal Commerce Protocol
UCP Everywhere :) -> UCP Coming to YouTube: YouTube is enhancing its advertising capabilities by introducing shoppable ads that integrate a 'Buy now' button leveraging Universal Commerce Protocol https://t.co/abrXcgNBHm https://t.co/drDpt8vOvi
Digital Catalogs Become Adaptive Commerce Tools
Digital catalogs are transitioning from static PDFs to interactive commerce tools that embed shopping and checkout directly within the experience. Marketers are urged to shift focus from vanity metrics like total views to engagement data such as click‑throughs, drop‑off points,...
AI Changes E-Commerce Discovery But Brand & Price Remain Top Purchase Factors
A March 2026 survey of 4,250 shoppers in the US, UK, France and Germany shows AI is reshaping product discovery, yet only 14% of consumers blindly follow an AI’s top recommendation. While 43% report positive AI‑assisted experiences, the majority still...
IGD Exclusive: How to Win with Shoppers in an Evolving Online Landscape
IGD forecasts UK online grocery will surge 23.6% annually through 2030, reaching roughly $7.8 billion. The market is fragmenting into four sub‑channels—retailer websites, quick commerce, social commerce and direct‑to‑consumer—each with distinct shopper profiles. Retailer websites remain the most used (35% of...
DSCP Smart Fulfillment Launches Domestic 3PL to Cut E‑commerce Shipping Delays
DSCP Smart Fulfillment announced a domestic third‑party logistics service that uses warehouses in California and New Jersey to give small e‑commerce brands 2‑4 day nationwide shipping. The move targets cost volatility from Strait of Hormuz delays and promises transparent, usage‑based...
Google Search Expands Agentic Capabilities with Information Agents and Universal Cart
Google unveiled new agentic features for Search at I/O 2026, rolling out Information Agents to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers and launching Universal Cart on Search and Gemini in the U.S. this summer. Information Agents continuously scan the web after a...
OSPREY LONDON Turns Fulfilment From Cost-Centre Into Competitive Advantage
Osprey London partnered with delivery platform Ingrid to overhaul its fulfillment, adding multi‑carrier options and integrating delivery with its CRM. The changes moved 90% of UK shipments to lower‑cost services, allowed the free‑shipping threshold to rise from £100 to £150...
ESW Teams Up with Shopify to Accelerate Cross‑Border Fashion Commerce
ESW announced its official status as a Shopify Certified Technology Partner, giving fashion brands a plug‑and‑play cross‑border platform that handles checkout localisation, duties, taxes and fraud mitigation. The move targets the 20% of shoppers already buying internationally and aims to...
Topsort Adds TikTok Offsite Ads, Unifying On‑Site and Social Commerce Media
Topsort unveiled TikTok Offsite Ads, a capability that lets marketplaces and vendors launch TikTok campaigns directly from the Topsort platform. The move extends the AI‑native commerce‑media infrastructure into short‑form video, aiming to simplify workflows and attribution across on‑site and off‑site...
Zoovu Acquires XGEN AI to Build Unified AI‑Native Engine for Ecommerce Discovery
Zoovu announced it has acquired XGEN AI to create a single AI‑native engine that powers product discovery across ecommerce sites. The deal, whose financial terms were not disclosed, is intended to combine Zoovu’s conversational commerce platform with XGEN’s AI‑driven search...
Best Society6 Alternatives in 2026: 9 Platforms for Artists and Designers
Society6 has shifted from an open marketplace to a curated, fixed‑royalty model in early 2025, stripping artists of pricing control and brand ownership. This change has prompted creators to explore alternatives that restore margin flexibility and direct customer relationships. The...
When the Shopper Is a Machine: The Loyalty Implications of Agentic Commerce
Retailers are witnessing AI agents—both third‑party platforms like ChatGPT and proprietary chatbots—making purchase decisions on behalf of shoppers. Programs such as Loblaw's ChatGPT‑integrated PC Express, Albertsons' and Target's conversational ads, and Woolworths' Gemini‑powered Olive illustrate the shift toward agentic commerce....
Blue Yonder Unveils Cognitive AI Suite at ICON 2026 to Accelerate Retail Forecasting
Blue Yonder rolled out a suite of cognitive AI solutions at its ICON 2026 conference, promising faster demand forecasting and real‑time shelf planning. The launch follows a $2.5 billion investment in a cloud‑native platform and highlights a shift from data reporting...
Medicube, Crocs Are Betting on TikTok Shop for Discovery E-Commerce
TikTok Shop is positioning itself as the hub of discovery‑driven e‑commerce, linking inspiration to purchase within a single platform. At the April TikTok Shop Summit, brands like K‑beauty leader Medicube and footwear giant Crocs showcased how creator‑led content and nonstop...
Google Unveils Its New Universal Cart for Agentic Commerce
At Google I/O, the company introduced Universal Cart, an AI‑powered shopping hub that lets users add items from different retailers while browsing Search, Gemini, YouTube or Gmail. The tool runs on the Universal Commerce Protocol co‑developed with Shopify, enabling agents...
Open Banking to Reshape Retail Payments in Canada
Canada’s retail payments are on the cusp of a rapid transformation as open‑banking frameworks move toward implementation. Interac’s Konek platform, backed by major banks, will let shoppers pay directly from chequing or savings accounts while preserving existing trust. The shift...
Why 90% of Brands Fail on TikTok Shop (And the System That Fixes It)
In this 15‑minute episode, Jordan from Social Commerce Club breaks down why 90% of brands flop on TikTok Shop and outlines eight actionable steps to build a winning social‑commerce machine. He emphasizes launching with a creator blitz, turning performance into...