A new retail and e-commerce report finds inflation is affecting the shopping habits of 85% of Americans, leading most to reduce their purchases and feel unhappier buying online.

In the report published Thursday, Morning Consult found that 77% of Americans are shopping less to save money. Only 41% said they enjoyed online shopping in June, down from 50% in March.

The report warns against blaming supply-chain issues for the trend. It notes that Americans, especially the millennials who make up most online shoppers, have less money to spend as consumer prices rise.

“Online shoppers are reporting fewer delayed orders, but as consumers begin deferring discretionary purchases because of inflation, shopping for fun isn’t what it used to be,” the report stated.

Many shoppers also are coping with inflation by looking for discounts and shopping at discount stores, Morning Consult reported.

Some retailers say the findings are spot-on.

“We sell pet

Read more
Read More

Retailers can bar shoppers for – in their view – returning too many items or making too many complaints, as Nannette Herbert has discovered.

Herbert told Guardian Money she has been banned by a number of retailers – including Amazon and Waitrose – for making complaints and refund requests.

Businesses are sometimes alerted when a customer displays “unusual” activity, such as requesting what might be viewed as a disproportionate number of refunds, and can block them from making future purchases.

Consumers can also be banned for making too many complaints if the retailer believes they are abusing the process.

Amazon told Herbert, who lives in London, that it was closing her account last month, saying she had “consistently requested refunds for a large number of orders”.

She says

Read more
Read More

Read more
Read More

New survey results exclusively previewed by Chain Store Age reveal limits on the effectiveness of online influencers.

According to a survey of 1,000 US adults commissioned by online expert review platform The Desire Companyinitially released to Chain Store Age, nearly all (90%) respondents are overwhelmed to some extent by volume of product information when shopping online. However, this does not necessarily translate to reliance on influencers.

In fact, a vast majority of respondents (87%) said it is likely that influencers don’t even use the products they advertise and only 11% believe that a social media influencer with millions of followers is a trustworthy source of information.

More than four in five (82%) respondents who have purchased something based on an influencer’s pitch say they have had some sort of negative experience with the product, with the most common being that the product didn’t match the influencer’s claims (41%

Read more
Read More
E-commerce prices began rising in June 2020, beginning an unprecedented stretch of 25 consecutive months of increases that underscored the severe price pressures hitting the US economy.

That streak has finally ended. Online prices declined by 1% year-over-year in July, snapping a string of nearly two years of persistent inflation, according to a report released Tuesday by Adobe.

The shift is even more pronounced on a month-over-month basis where online prices dropped by 2% in July, Adobe said.

The findings bode well for the inflation crisis, signaling a potential easing of the pricing pressures that have squeezed consumers and raised recession fears.

Gas prices have fallen.  Here's why inflation hasn't

Of course, it may take considerable time before inflation gets anywhere back to normal levels, and Adobe noted that online grocery prices continue to surge.

Inflation remains way too high across the US economy.

Consumer prices surged by 9.1% year-over-year in June, the biggest increase in more than
Read more
Read More