The 2026 selling season is about to look very different. We’re at peak adoption of consumers using LLMs, like ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and Perplexity, to shop. Because of this, the consumer journey and path to conversion are now more complex. The trust consumers place in LLM responses to their shopping prompts is surprisingly high, with most shoppers relying entirely on the AI to shape the decision all the way to purchase. 

95% of shoppers who get a product recommendation from an LLM won’t visit a brand or retailer website to verify it. Among 18–27 year olds, 64% buy on the recommendation alone.

Twelve months ago, most brands were still focused on ranking in traditional search results. Consumer shopping behavior has changed more in the last 12 months than in the previous five years combined. That shift is going to define how every peak event plays out in 2026. 

Amazon and Walmart are blocking LLMs from crawling their product data. So, keeping consumers within the Amazon ecosystem to maximize Prime Day returns and overall conversions is critical. 52% of all U.S. consumers still begin their online product searches directly on Amazon,^¹ which is reassuring for Prime Day activity. But when we factor in the LLM component, our strategy to maximize Prime returns gets more nuanced. 

Previously, we wouldn’t have as heavily considered our clients’ .com websites as part of the Prime Day journey, but if LLM recommendations are relying on Google and other general product data feeds, then ensuring product data hygiene from those outside sources is critical. 

How should brands reach shoppers on Amazon and LLMs at the same time?

• For consumers already starting their journey in Amazon search, keep them engaged, targeted with appropriate content and ads, and slam dunk the conversion. 
• For consumers starting their search in LLMs, make sure client .com product data feeds are accurate, updated, and organized so the right recommendations entice consumers to seek out the shopping moment outside the LLM. 

There’s more to this year’s approach. Prime Day lands June 23–26 this year, the earliest window since 2021 and the second year at four full days.¹

Back-to-school demand is already overlapping with it. BFCM is less than six months out. And the LLMs shoppers are using to find and compare products have improved significantly since last peak season.

LLMs are pulling richer product details, making more accurate comparisons, and starting to support transactions directly. The brands and retailers who will perform best during peak 2026 are the ones whose catalogs are accurate, structured, and available everywhere the AI is looking. 

At Rithum, we work across 900+ channels with brands and retailers preparing for these events right now. We’re deep in the planning alongside them, from media strategy to product data to channel prioritization, and everything below reflects what we’re seeing and recommending heading into peak selling in 2026. 

What are the major 2026 peak sales events, and when do they happen? 

• Amazon Prime Day: June 23–26¹ 
• Back-to-school: May through September (peaks during and after Prime Day) 
• Labor Day: September 1 
• Amazon Prime Big Deal Days: October (dates TBD; October 7–8 in 2025) 
• Singles’ Day: November 11 
• Black Friday: November 27 
• Cyber Monday: November 30 

Beyond the timeline, two things connect every event on this list: AI is reshaping how shoppers discover products, and the brands with accurate, structured data across channels will capture more demand than those without it. 

How should brands prepare for Amazon Prime Day in June 2026? 

Prime Day runs June 23–26 across 35 categories, with deals dropping three times daily and new inventory going live every five minutes during peak hours.¹ Amazon is putting particular emphasis on fresh groceries and household essentials, building on 4 billion grocery and essentials items delivered via same-day delivery over the past year.² 

Last year’s Prime Day (July 8–11) generated $24.1 billion in U.S. online spend, up 30.3% year over year.³ Four of the top five items sold were household or grocery products.⁴ School supplies rose 175% and dorm essentials 84%.³

Across our own client base, the four-day format shifted buying patterns. Shoppers browsed Days 1 and 2, then converted late, with Day 4 GMV jumping 38% year over year. 

One Rithum client pivoted mid-event to back-to-school bundles and optimized product titles on Day 2. That shift drove a 15% sales lift over the prior year. The teams that adjusted in real time outperformed the ones that set a plan and left it. And that was before AI was deeply embedded in the Prime Day experience. 

What role does Alexa AI play in Prime Day 2026? 

This year, Alexa for Shopping (formerly Rufus) will sit directly in the Amazon search bar, search results, and product detail pages for every U.S. customer.¹ Amazon has told sellers that Alexa pulls from listing content to answer shopper questions and make recommendations. If your product attributes are incomplete, Alexa will recommend someone else’s.

During Prime Day 2025, shoppers who engaged Rufus were 60% more likely to complete a purchase. Alexa now helps shoppers build personalized deal guides, set price alerts, trigger auto-buy at target prices, and review 365-day price history. Every one of those features pulls from your product data. If your titles, descriptions, and images aren’t accurate, you’re not showing up in those conversations. 

Rithum’s retail media advertising connects spend to product performance across Amazon, Walmart, and Target so you can shift budgets while the event is live. Marketplace listings keep data accurate across 900+ channels so you can coordinate pricing, inventory, and promotions across Amazon and every channel competing for the same shopper during Prime Day. And inventory management prevents oversells and stockouts during the exact hours demand spikes. 

How does AI shopping change peak season strategy in 2026? 

When AI gets product information wrong, 58% of shoppers lose trust in the brand itself, not the AI tool that served it. And shoppers aren’t loyal to a single AI platform either: ChatGPT’s daily active user share has fallen steadily since early 2025, Gemini has more than doubled its share in the same period, and 20% of AI users now regularly use two or more chatbot apps. Brands that only optimize for one platform are leaving reach on the table. 

The shopping capabilities on these platforms have also matured. Perplexity offers one-click checkout through Buy with Pro and PayPal integration across thousands of merchants. Gemini supports agentic checkout through Google Pay, including auto-buy when a price target is met.

ChatGPT launched native shopping features in late 2025. These are live commerce channels, and every one of them relies on structured product data to generate accurate recommendations. 

We built ChatGPT and Perplexity Feeds for this: product data compiled, optimized for LLMs, and delivered for ingestion so your brand controls how it appears in AI recommendations. Our upcoming GEO (generative engine optimization) pilot provides a way to track how products appear, move, and compare within AI-driven results. Rithum and Stripe are also building the commerce infrastructure for transactions that happen inside the AI conversation itself. 

The path from catalog accuracy to LLM delivery to in-conversation purchase is what determines whether your products get recommended during peak season. Every step depends on the one before it, and most brands are still missing at least one. 

How early does back-to-school shopping start in 2026, and what should sellers prioritize? 

Back-to-school retail is projected at $85.42 billion in 2026, up 3.3% year over year.⁵ 67% of families started buying by early July 2025, up from 55% the year before. With Prime Day now in June and school supplies already among its top-performing categories (up 175% during Prime Day 2025³), back-to-school effectively starts during Prime Day. 

84% of parents say prices are too high. 82% are prioritizing value over brand. But 80% still say buying the specific products their child wants is important.⁵ Parents are cutting back on clothing and switching to store brands in some categories while spending full price in others. Brands that understand which of their products fall into which bucket can plan promotions accordingly. 

We recommend spreading promotions across May through September rather than concentrating spend in a single burst. Rithum’s product catalog feeds push near-real-time updates to price, stock, and product data across every channel where shoppers and AI agents are looking. For brands selling across multiple regions, automatic localization for language, currency, and regional specs keeps listings accurate without rebuilding feeds from scratch. 

What should brands plan for across Q4 2026 peak events? 

September through November packs five major sales events into 90 days, and performance in each one can help shape the strategy for the next. 

Labor Day (September 1) — The last major sales moment before Q4 takes over.

Brands use it to move seasonal stock in a smart way. They set pricing rules based on demand signals, not flat markdowns. This helps them carry less dead stock into the holiday rush.

Rithum automates promotional updates across marketplaces. Order management routes to the best fulfillment location based on your rules. 

Prime Big Deal Days (October) — Amazon’s separate October event, distinct from summer Prime Day.

The 2025 event (October 7–8) outperformed the prior year globally.³ Shoppers complete holiday purchases here, and the performance data directly informs Q4 decisions. Brands that connected product feeds to LLM platforms earlier in the year will have compounding advantages by October.

Singles’ Day (November 11) — $202 billion across major Chinese platforms in 2024, making it the largest single shopping event globally.³

The event continues to expand into Southeast Asia, where Chinese ecommerce players now account for up to 50% of B2C GMV in key markets. U.S. and European retailers saw an 11% year-over-year lift in influenced revenue last November. Rithum supports 600+ global marketplaces with built-in localization and dedicated account strategists across EU, US, and APAC. 

How should brands prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2026? 

Black Friday (November 27) and Cyber Monday (November 30) — BFCM 2024 delivered $10.8 billion (Black Friday) and a record $14.3 billion (Cyber Monday 2025).³

Promotions started climbing November 16 last year, nearly two weeks early. Mobile drove 56% of online holiday spend last season.³ AI-assisted shopping volume, which surged during Prime Day 2025, will be even higher by November as more consumers adopt LLM-based product discovery. 

During BFCM 2025, we advised clients to spread budgets from October through December. Clients increased spending by only 3% on average and still hit efficiency goals with a 1.7 advertising cost of sales. Here’s how those Prime Day lessons apply to holiday planning. 

Across all of these events, the operational requirements are the same: accurate product data everywhere you sell, budgets that can move in real time, and listings that don’t break under pressure. Rithum’s product catalog feeds deliver data to every channel and AI platform in the right format. Paid search and shopping ads optimize across Google, Microsoft, and Meta with feed-level precision. And marketplace listings catches broken or non-compliant listings before they cost you revenue during the highest-traffic weeks of the year. 

How do you prepare for peak season across 900+ channels at once? 

Our 2026 Commerce Readiness Index found that 43% of retailers and 37% of brands are prioritizing AI enablement across operations. The best teams have one thing in common at their busiest times. Product data, ad spend, inventory, and fulfillment all run in a single connected system. When something changes mid-event, they can act right away. 

Rithum brings all of that into one platform across 900+ channels and AI platforms. If you’re planning for peak 2026 and want to talk through your approach, our team is here. 

Footnotes
¹ Amazon Press Release, “Mark Your Calendars: Amazon Announces Prime Day Event from June 23–26,” June 2026. press.aboutamazon.com
² Forbes, “Amazon Prime Day 2026 Moves to June—This Time With Alexa AI Powering the Cart,” June 2026. forbes.com
³ Adobe Analytics, various reports including “Prime Day Event Drove $24 Billion in Online Spend Across U.S. Retailers” (July 2025), Black Friday 2024, Cyber Monday 2025, holiday season 2025, and Singles’ Day data. business.adobe.com
⁴ Numerator, “Amazon Prime Day 2025 First Half Results,” July 2025
⁵ MRI-Simmons, “Back-to-School Shopping Trends of the 2026 Season,” May 2026. mrisimmons.com | Accio, “Back-to-School Trends 2026.” accio.com

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• Snapshot: eTail Insights surveyed marketplace and ecommerce leaders for Mastering the marketplace in retail and ecommerce to benchmark marketplace trends including what’s working, what’s breaking, and where budgets are going next. 
  Why it matters: These benchmarks show how marketplace teams describe their day-to-day reality right now. 

• Listing optimization no longer separates anyone. In the survey, every team rates its listing optimization capability as good or better, which tells you where the “easy wins” have already been harvested. 
  Why it matters: Listings may look “done,” but they stop being the lever that moves growth. 

• Retailer and brand teams lose time and margin on coordination. Inventory coordination across platforms ranks as the top challenge at 40%, followed by marketplace data integration at 33%. 
  Why it matters: When systems disagree, the fallout lands in fulfillment, customer service, and returns. 

• Leaders are budgeting for trust optimization above all else. Over the next 12 months, the top investment is customer service and review management systems at 51%, ahead of marketplace advertising and content expansion at 46%. This makes sense, as credibility optimization is key to meeting both customers’ and agentic shopping tools’ high standards. 
  Why it matters: Teams are funding the places where customers notice problems first and where reputations change fastest. 

• Profit pressure is shaping the stack. Competitive and dynamic pricing tools sit close behind at 41%, a signal that fees and price competition are forcing sharper math. 
  Why it matters: If teams can’t see the true cost per order, pricing tools can push them into underpricing. 

• Marketplaces are moving from “channel” to “center of gravity.” 81% expect marketplace sales to become more important to overall strategy, and 73% expect that shift within the next year. 
  Why it matters: Marketplace execution is becoming core operations, not an add-on project. 

A customer adds a refrigerator water filter to their cart. They’ve bought the brand before, and everything looks familiar. One click from paying, they pause. The model name is close, but not identical.  The customer taps the chat bubble in the corner of the screen to make sure they’re purchasing the right part.  

That bubble used to connect them to a live agent. Now it’s often an AI assistant, trained to answer product questions quickly, so the shopper doesn’t abandon checkout. 

“Is this the filter for model X?” 

The assistant replies instantly: “yes, it’s compatible.”  

But it’s not.  

The filter fits a similar model with a near-identical name. The product listing doesn’t clearly distinguish the two, so the AI fills in the gap with the most plausible-sounding answer. The customer buys anyway. The filter arrives, doesn’t fit, and gets returned. 

The return reason isn’t “wrong model.” It’s “defective.” The frustration isn’t just with the product. It’s with the guidance the shopper trusted. 

This is the kind of mistake customers try to avoid. When it happens anyway, they don’t blame the model, they blame the seller. Marketplaces penalize getting it “almost right” with returns, bad reviews, and support costs. The warning appears in performance long before you see it on a dashboard. 

The new marketplace problem: the storefront that moves faster than operations 

Most organizations aren’t dabbling in marketplaces anymore. Nearly everyone sells on Amazon. Most also sell on Walmart.com, according to eTail’s Mastering the marketplace in retail and ecommerce report. 

But while most respondents say their marketplaces strategy is at least somewhat effective for revenue, there is a deeper problem. Each marketplace comes with its own rules and requirements. Retailers and brands don’t describe their biggest marketplace challenges as “getting listed” (the industry has evolved past that point). They describe them as keeping platforms aligned. 

Inventory coordination across platforms ranks as the top challenge at 40%. Marketplace data integration follows at 33%. 

Those aren’t minor headaches. They sit underneath the moments customers remember: the delivery promise that never was, the unwelcomed out-of-stock surprise, the placement part that “should have worked,” or the one-star review that deters others from buying your product. 

Meanwhile, marketplace importance keeps rising. 81% say marketplaces will become more important to overall strategy, and 73% expect that shift to happen within twelve months. So, as opportunity grows, the friction grows along with it. 

Where marketplace execution starts to separate teams

Listing optimization is not the weak point: every respondent rates their listings as good or better. But when everyone feels strong in the same area, it is no longer a competitive advantage. Instead, the advantage shifts to what’s more difficult to keep consistent at scale, such as inventory accuracy, data consistency, review health, margin control, and service quality. 

It also moves to the places where organizations admit weakness. In this case, one-third rate “review and reputation management” as fair or poor. 

That gap matters because reviews aren’t just social proof. They shape ranking, conversion, and what shoppers learn before they buy. They also feed the summaries shoppers increasingly rely on, whether that’s a marketplace recap, a review highlight, or an AI-style shopping assistant answer. A shopper who doubts your listing doesn’t read your FAQ. They read your reviews. 

Marketplaces reward speed, but trust decides who keeps the sale 

Marketplaces raise expectations without lowering complexity. Shoppers expect quick answers, fast shipping, and painless resolution even when the catalog and fulfillment reality are messy.  

Trust decides whether a retailer or brand keeps the sale. On marketplaces, customers judge trust through what happens when something goes wrong and what other buyers say happened to them. That’s why the report’s investment priorities matter. Leaders are investing in customer service and review management systems at 51% over the next year, ahead of advertising and content expansion at 46%. 

Competitive and dynamic pricing tools follow close behind at 41%, underscoring how quickly the fees and shifting costs can erode margins. Teams don’t lead with service systems unless service continues to break. 

The catalog is the experience now 

The story of a mismatched water filter isn’t really about AI. It’s about what happens when product information fails under pressure and gets repeated across channels. 

Marketplaces have always punished unclear product information, but the old failure mode looked different. A customer read the listing, guessed, and learned the truth when the package arrived. 

Now the failure happens earlier. Customers ask questions mid-journey and even when the catalog is incomplete or inconsistent, the assistant still answers. When two SKUs look nearly identical, the assistant still picks one. When variation structure is messy, the assistant still tries to resolve it. If your product data leaves room for interpretation, the assistant will fill it, and you will own the consequences. 

What breaks first when teams scale marketplaces 

Most marketplace failures don’t start with a dramatic crash. Then one day, someone notices reviews shifting in tone. Support tickets spiking. Returns rising. A marketplace rep flags an issue. A finance team sees margin slip and can’t tie it to one decision. 

Coordination can be the biggest bottleneck. Inventory coordination and marketplace data integration top the list. If you can’t keep systems aligned, you can’t keep promises aligned. 

Three shifts that make marketplace growth easier to scale 

Most teams don’t need a radical reinvention. They need to tighten the parts that create expensive downstream effects. 

These three easy shifts  map directly to what leaders say is slowing them down. 

1) Treat inventory coordination like a revenue problem 

Inventory coordination across platforms ranks as the top marketplace challenge. This sits at the center of marketplace performance. 

When inventory is wrong, you don’t just lose a sale. You lose ranking and trust. You waste customer support time. You pay for returns. You create reviews that never should have existed. 

Start by making your inventory view boring and reliable. Establish one source of truth for what’s sellable. Push that truth to every platform on a cadence you can defend. 

That shift prevents the “invisible losses” teams learn to tolerate, including cancellations, refunds, angry reviews, and time spent explaining mistakes. 

2) Treat review management as a system, not a reaction 

One-third of survey respondents rate “review and reputation management” as fair or poor. That’s one-third of teams saying they still treat reviews reactively—and know that it’s hurting them. 

Reviews deserve a better approach because they aren’t random. They’re patterns. 

A shopper complains that the filter “didn’t work.” Another says the product “felt defective.” A third says the listing “misled them.” The issue is expectation. 

Route review themes back to the source. If customers keep confusing models, fix the variation structure. If customers misunderstand compatibility, tighten attributes. If customers misread product claims, update bullet copy. 

When review management becomes a loop instead of a fire drill, you stop treating bad reviews as a cost of doing business. 

3) Align marketplace data before you scale ads 

Marketplace data integration ranks as the second-biggest challenge at 33%, and it’s easy to underestimate how costly those integration speed bumps become once you push harder on growth levers. 

Incomplete integration creates quiet inconsistencies: price mismatches, delayed updates, missing attributes, inventory errors that propagate across systems. 

Then advertising scales and performance doesn’t follow. You spend more to acquire customers you can’t keep, and you blame the campaign when the problem lived upstream. 

Tighten the data path before you scale spend. Your future self will thank you in fewer support tickets and cleaner margin. 

Where AI fits without hijacking your strategy 

AI can help marketplace teams move faster. It can spot inconsistencies, flag missing fields, draft content variants, and speed up service workflows. 

It cannot rescue messy foundations. Give it incomplete data and it produces confident answers built on gaps. That’s why product truth has become a performance lever: AI increases the speed of both accuracy and error. 

What mastering the marketplace looks like in 2026 

Most teams feel good about listings. The report shows the friction elsewhere: inventory coordination, marketplace data integration, and review management. That’s why next year’s spend tilts toward customer service and review systems ahead of content and advertising. 

Marketplace growth requires consistency. Keep one version of the product true across platforms: what it is, whether it’s available, what it costs after fees, and what the customer should expect. The report shows why this is hard at scale. Inventory coordination ranks as the top challenge at 40%, followed by marketplace data integration at 33%. When those basics slip, the cost surfaces as returns, heavier support volume, and reviews that live on the listing. 

Micah McGuire is Senior Product Marketer, Brands, at Rithum. 

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During Prime Days 2025, one client brand Rithum works with saw their conversion and average order value slide early. Instead of throwing more budget at weak campaigns, the team held spend, watched the data, and waited for cleaner signals. When performance improved later in the event, they pushed onward and finished strong. 

An apparel brand during the same period saw similar issues. But they decided not to wait. Reliable performance signals showed a shift toward back-to-school demand. So, the team pivoted mid-event and adjusted assortments to focus on back-to-school products, introduced bundle offers, and optimized product titles and keywords. That shift resulted in a 15% increase in sales year over year vs. the previous Prime Day. 

Both brands took different approaches, based on having the visibility and confidence to act on what the data was telling them. There wasn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, but the key was data and agility. 

But according to the 2026 commerce readiness index, a survey of 200 brand and retail leaders across the U.S. and U.K, many brands don’t have that level of confidence and visibility to make it work.

According to the survey data, economic instability and inflation are the top hurdles to market expansion for both retailers and brands. But close behind sit technology and data challenges, rising operational costs, shifting consumer behavior, and supply chain issues.  

Some of that drag is the market. But lot of it is self-inflicted. Using the survey responses from commerce leaders, these are the three internal drags you say you feel the most . . . and what you can about them. And one external headwind you can only prepare for. 

Hidden drag 1: Manual ecommerce operations that slow omnichannel growth 

This drag shows up in the everyday work that still runs on spreadsheets and email, even as your sales channels and partners multiply. 

According to the survey, leaders say they’re “stuck at spreadsheet speed.” Fully automated workflows are rare, with many retail and brand leaders saying that 26% to 50% of their workflows still rely on manual steps like spreadsheets and email. 

In practice, this might look like retail vendor analysts pulling late-order reports into Excel, pivoting them, emailing suppliers one by one, and manually editing product descriptions before listings go live. On the brand side, manual work often involves pulling performance signals from multiple platforms, reconciling conflicting reports in spreadsheets, and chasing analysts for validation before anyone can act. 

You can see the impact of that manual overload in the data. Nearly three quarters of leaders say they at least sometimes make decisions based on inaccurate or inconsistent data, and more than a third say it happens often or all the time. 

53% of retailers say they act on important performance signals within 48 hours; brands are more likely to need three to five business days. Even the fastest groups say they are still acting on incomplete or inconsistent data and largely manual processes. 

If you’re selling through marketplaces, dropship programs, retailer.com sites, and your own direct-to-consumer (D2C) website, this is more than an internal annoyance. Manual listing updates, inventory syncs, and routing decisions become the places where channels drift and small errors balloon across your entire network. 

To turn this drag into an advantage, teams are: 

• Automating onboarding of assortments, content updates, inventory synchronization, and order routing where possible. 

• Consolidating product, inventory, and order data so a change to a SKU is reflected wherever you sell it. 

• Replacing “hero” spreadsheets with shared rules and playbooks that run on current, accurate data. 

Hidden drag 2: AI running on messy product and inventory data 

This drag appears when AI is built on data that is incomplete, inconsistent, or scattered across systems. 

AI is already live for many of the retailers and brands surveyed. 41% of retailers and 29% of brands use AI-based automation across functions like pricing, inventory, and marketing, and another 57% of brands and 41% of retailers say they are getting ready to implement it. 

At the same time, nearly three in four leaders say AI is advancing faster than their organizations can apply it effectively. 

The gap is visible: 

• 49% of retailers and 62% of brands say they still struggle with too many manual processes. 

• 91% of retailers and 78% of brands say poor data quality is a challenge. 

The same leaders rolling out AI across pricing, inventory, and marketing are also telling us they don’t fully trust the data underneath it. When catalog attributes are inconsistent, stock numbers are unreliable, or order and return data live in different silos, AI trained on that information doesn’t fix the issues, it magnifies them. 

This can show up as: 

• Retail media campaigns bidding on SKUs that are already out of stock on key partners. 

• Pricing models making decisions based on incomplete fees or cost data in certain channels. 

• AI “optimizing” assortments based on stale sell-through and margin data. 

How to make AI actually useful 

Start by fixing the inputs. Clean up product data, improve inventory accuracy, and connect orders and returns back to their source channels so you know what really happened and where. 

Then shorten the path from insight to action. If every AI-driven price or bid suggestion still has to be pasted into a spreadsheet and debated in a meeting, you will never see the benefit.  

Apply AI where it matters most: margin pressure from fulfillment and logistics, inventory stock-outs, and wasted media on low-quality traffic. Those are natural places to focus AI, once the data is ready. 

Hidden drag 3: Margin erosion across marketplaces and retail media 

This drag shows up in the small gaps where money and customers slip away across channels. 

Brands say the biggest hits in the past year came from fulfilment, logistics, and product costs. Retailers point first to tariffs and trade disruptions. Both groups also call out discounts, paid media inefficiency, and listing errors or inaccurate product data as other margin drains. 

Retailers most often lose shoppers before checkout, especially when ads do not match the product experience or when payment fails. Brands are more likely to have problems after the sale, in customer care and returns or refunds. 

At the same time, 91% of retailers and 84% of brands say they have changed their marketing channel mix in the last year, often in response to shifting consumer behavior and strategy.  

Some examples where customers and profit are lost in operations: 

• Broken links or mismatched product pages that cause pre-checkout drop-off. 

• Ads driving to SKUs that are out of stock or unprofitable to ship once fees and costs are counted. 

• Returns and service policies that vary by channel, leaving some experiences noticeably worse. 

The fix is to connect performance metrics with operational and margin data to see where the problems really come from. Are you losing money because of traffic quality, or because of content, availability, or fulfillment issues that could be fixed centrally and rolled out across channels? 

The drag you can’t fix: External volatility and ecommerce expansion 

This force comes from outside your walls, but it still shapes how fast you can grow and where. 

When retail and brand leaders rank their top hurdles to expanding into new markets, economic instability and inflation come first for both. Close behind are technology and data challenges, rising operational costs, shifting consumer behavior, supply chain issues, regulatory complexity, and tariff or trade uncertainty. 

Tariffs in particular stand out. 46% of retailers and 60% of brands say they are at least somewhat concerned that tariff and trade shifts will disrupt their sourcing strategies. More than 60% of both groups say they are re-evaluating sourcing relationships to prepare, while many are also cutting business costs and investing in supply chain resilience. 

You cannot control that volatility. However, you can decide how much internal drag you stack on top of it. Focus on what you can change by building stronger operations, reducing technology barriers, and creating more flexible, integrated customer experiences so you can pivot channels, partners, and assortments when conditions change. 

For a deeper look at the data behind these drags and more benchmarks you can use in your own planning, download the full 2026 commerce readiness index report. 

The post Three hidden drags you can fix (and one you can’t) appeared first on Rithum.

Shoppers now ask AI assistants what they want to buy and get a short, curated list of recommendations with reasons, not a list of links to look up. Amazon’s Help Me Decide feature picks one product and explains why. Pinterest introduced a multimodal AI shopping assistant that turns voice, text, and image prompts into shoppable recommendations. Snap is building conversational search into Snapchat through a $400M partnership with Perplexity, bringing cited, in-chat answers to nearly a billion users starting in 2026. 

Assistant-led shopping is gaining ground, but The 2026 commerce readiness index, based on surveys of 200 global brand and retail executives, found that most retailers and brands are not ready. “Customer journeys are bleeding revenue. The cracks are everywhere: prospective shoppers bounce at broken links, irrelevant ads, and empty shelves, while current customers churn after bad service, costly returns, and radio silence from brands. Each leak bleeds profit.”  

Pouring more spend into acquisition won’t fix a leaky funnel. Instead, you must patch your highest-loss points first, then scale your spend to drive growth. 

Find the leaks first 

Before fixing anything, identify where journeys fail. According to the survey, retailers lose prospects before checkout. 26% point to gaps between ads and products, and 19% to payment processing issues. 

But brands lose customers after the sale. 22% cite customer care problems and 17% point to returns and refunds. 

These two realities suggest a practical order of work: stabilize pre-checkout for retailers and post-purchase for brands, supported by clean data and responsive operations. 

Why leaks persist (and why “move fast” isn’t enough) 

The index shows that while retailers and brands say they want to move quickly, their inputs and workflows slow them down. “Fully automated workflows are almost nonexistent,” according to the survey respondents. 

While 99% of brands and 100% of retailers say they feel confident measuring performance, high confidence is not the same as accuracy. Nearly 75% of brands and retailers admit they sometimes make decisions based on inaccurate data. And more than one-third say it happens “often” or “all the time.” 

These leaks are not random. They come from manual processes and imperfect data. Fix the inputs to steady the buyer journey. 

Start with these four leaks 

Start with the biggest-loss points. Each fix will reinforce the next. 

1. Ad → product page 
   26% of retailers said ad-to-product gaps proved most problematic. To fix it, make ads match reality. Tie placements to real-time catalog data: titles, images, price, and availability. Replace static landing pages with feed-driven product pages. Run daily link and variant checks. The result is fewer wasted clicks and a clearer path to cart. 
2. Payment processing  
   19% said payment processing is the second-largest failure point for retailers. Treat checkout errors as system signals. Track decline codes and 3D secure (3DS) loops. Tune fraud rules to reduce false positives. Align tax and shipping logic with inventory holds so payment retries go through. When payments clear reliably, your media and product page improvements (PDP) have a bigger impact. 
3. Customer care  
   For brands, customer service is the largest post-purchase leak with 22% citing it as their top breakdown. Give service agents one unified view of orders, inventory, and fulfillment. Publish status updates across channels so customers don’t need to ask. Faster resolutions protect margin and earn the next purchase. 
4. Returns and refunds 
   Treat returns as structured feedback. Feed return reason codes back into product copy, images, and targeting to fix fit, spec, and compatibility issues earlier in the funnel. Keep the returns process easy enough to preserve loyalty, but tighten controls where needed.  

Make speed and accuracy inseparable 

According to the index, “Data accuracy and speed can’t be trade-offs. They have to be solved together.” That starts with reducing manual work, checking data as it comes in, keeping prices, inventory, and delivery promises up to date, and stopping bad data before it goes live. 

When performance signals do light up, move quickly: over half of retailers say they respond within 48 hours, while brands are more likely to take three to five business days. Shorten the loop so fixes land while demand is still happening. 

What to scale once the leaks are sealed 

Social commerce leads on conversion, and site experience is close behind. Reach doesn’t matter if the landing page is slow or checkout trips people up. Fix the path first, then spend. 

Customers are shortening the distance from discovery to purchase. The Index’s guidance is simple: fix the biggest leaks first, then scale your spend.  

Download the full report here. To turn the index into an action plan for your team, talk to Rithum today.

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Summary: Holiday 2025 ecommerce strategy

• Data readiness is uneven. Nearly 3 in 4 retailers and brands say they’re making decisions on incomplete or inaccurate data. Retailers more often act within 48 hours when signals spike, while more brands take 3 to 5 days. 
• Shopper timing has shifted. As covered in our recent webinar, during summer sales season carts were built early and many purchases landed on day 2 to day 4. 
• Where conversion happens is evolving. Social commerce is the top current conversion driver, with site experience close behind. Think live shopping, influencer unboxings, and social-first storytelling that leads directly to purchase. 
• Returns impact profit. 60% of shoppers made at least one return last year. Average processing cost is about $30 per returns. U.S. online returns are projected above $363B; globally, returns account for roughly 17% of sales value. 
• Policy influences purchase. 41% say return policies affect the decision, 88% prioritize free returns, and 47% have stopped buying from a retailer or brand due to policy. 
• Two case notes. Monitoring hourly and leaning back in late improved AOV and conversion by the end of a four-day event. An apparel brand’s mid-event pivot to seasonal assortments, bundles, and cleaner titles delivered a 15% lift over the prior year. 

Shoppers plan early and purchase later

The competing big sales events of July, September, and October have given us an outline of the shape of things to come for holiday season just around the corner. The big themes? Shoppers are planning early and often building carts early then buying late. In our recent webinar, Countdown to holiday 2025: Strategies for growth and agility, experts Kellie Martin, Nistaar Chandhok, and Storm Morgan summed up a new pattern of shopper behavior: “Shoppers were browsing less and buying more deliberately. Cart building happened early, but conversion often didn’t occur until day two or four.” 

The earlier cart building points to the competition of today’s sales season, and the ease of comparison shopping across big sales (especially when shoppers are aided by AI). While early cart building is slowing down the path to purchase, it also gives you longer windows to act on your live sales data—the key is getting the right information quickly, understanding the patterns, and knowing when to change course during a sale (and when to stay steady).  

The 2026 commerce readiness index shows that commerce leaders report uneven data quality and response speed, which matters when promotions land and search behavior shifts.  

Here are some scenarios to help you plan around that pause and move based on what you see as part of your holiday 2025 ecommerce strategy.

Path A: Improve visibility 7 to 10 days before the peak window for your holiday 2025 ecommerce strategy

If data shows you that your discoverability is weak, begin here. The webinar tied early launches to stronger CTR and lower CPC. “You can’t win if you show up late,” Storm said. 

• First, match real searches. Tune product titles and keywords to seasonal queries across the marketplaces and channels you sell through, including your site and social shops. 
• Next, strengthen the product page. Use enhanced product pages with clear bullets and consistent value messaging so comparison shoppers can decide quickly. 
• Then, add early creator content. The webinar highlighted authentic influencer campaigns that show the product in use as a lift when paired with strong product pages. 

Watch CTR, CPC, PDP views, and add to cart. If carts grow but orders land later, go to Path B. If traffic remains thin, stay on Path A and keep improving titles, images, and keywords. 

Path B: Convert day-2 to day-4 buyers without deep discounts 

If carts are building while buyers compare, lean into the timing covered in the webinar. More than a third of shoppers price-check across sites before they commit. 

• First, show value rather than cutting deeper. Bundled offers and loyalty programs lifted average order value in the examples that Storm discussed in the webinar, without the cost of blanket discounts. 
• Next, keep it current. Update titles, keywords, and product page copy to match trending queries and seasonal context during the event. 
• Then, find ready-to-buy-shoppers. AI-driven formats like Google Demand Gen and Performance Max helped when the message was specific to winning new customers. 

Track day-2 and day-4 conversion, AOV, and cart resume rate. If the margin tightens, go to Path C. If traffic softens, return to Path A. 

Path C: Protect margin with value and channel fit 

If revenue grows while profit slips, use the levers shown in the readiness index and webinar. 

• First, tap into pricing agility. Dynamic pricing helped retailers and brands respond to competitors’ moves in real time without broad cuts. 
• Next, set the products and price for each channel. Multichannel shopping is normal. Set assortment and pricing strategy to each channel’s strengths. In the holiday readiness webinar, Storm noted that buyers will pay full price when value is clear, especially for scarce items or well-timed bundles. 
• Then, watch results hour by hour. Rithum saw clients who watched SKUs and profit hour by hour and adjusted as needed. 

If returns start to rise or policy questions distract buyers, move to Path D. 

Path D: Reduce the cost of returns while keeping trust 

Returns are the swing variable in Q4. The 2025 Global Returns & Profit Impact Report quantifies what drives them and what stops them. 

• First, fix issues before purchase. 60% of consumers made at least one return last year. Poor fit is the top driver in apparel at 61%, and about a third of shoppers returned because items did not match descriptions or photos. Clear sizing, accurate copy, and strong images reduce avoidable returns. 
• Next, set clear policies that compete. 41% of consumers say return policies influence purchase, 88% prioritize free returns, and 47% have stopped shopping with a retailer or brand due to policy. If you change terms, make them easy to understand and consistent. 
• Then, plan for common behaviors. Bracketing is a common habit by 36% of global shoppers and over half among shoppers under 35. Two-thirds used third-party drop-off to return at least once in the last 12 months. 51% consider 14 days or less a reasonable window, with higher acceptance of shorter returns windows in some European markets. Understand some of the key levers to lower returns, and lean in.  

Keep an eye on total cost data. The average processing cost is about $30 per return. U.S. online returns are projected above $363B in 2025. 

If operations are steady and you want more demand, go to Path E. 

Path E: Adjust live and capture after-event demand 

If mid-event performance wobbles or you want to extend gains, follow the measured moves shared by Rithum’s experts during the holiday readiness webinar. 

• First, decide with hourly signals. One retailer started slow, held budget, watched hourly, and leaned back in; by the end, AOV and conversion improved, said Storm. 
• Next, pivot toward what is trending. An apparel brand shifted to back-to-school assortments, introduced bundles, and tightened titles and keywords, finishing 15% above the prior year’s Prime event. Per Nistaar: “They were pretty happy with that.” 
• Then, keep campaigns live after the rush. After-event demand is real; in October, we even saw some spending surge higher the day after an event ended than during the first day of the event. Test urgency messaging and retarget saved carts with offers that match the week’s story. 

If visibility still lags, return to Path A. If carts build again and buyers wait until later in the window, go back to Path B. 

Regional notes to localize any path 

If you sell in multiple regions, tune the plan to what shoppers actually do there. In Europe, shoppers compare across Amazon and regional marketplaces like Otto or Allegro, which means titles, keywords, and offers should reference local norms and events. In APAC, Singles Day and other game-like promotions drive activity, so timing and creative should match those mechanics and calendars. In North America, shoppers react strongly to fast delivery promises and a smooth checkout, so make shipping dates and returns information easy to see on the product page. Use these differences to pick which path to start with and which levers to pull first. 

Quick map for retailers and brands 

• If you are not being seen, use Path A. 
• If carts are full and buyers wait, use Path B. 
• If margin is slipping, use Path C. 
• If returns threaten profit, use Path D. 
• If performance is uneven mid-event or you want the tail-end lift, use Path E. 

Start where you are, switch when signals change, and keep each move tied to your data. 

If you’re ready to turn these paths into results, learn how Rithum can help.

Storm Morgan is a Senior Technical Account Manager at Rithum. 

Sources: The 2026 commerce readiness index, Global returns & profit impact report, Countdown to holiday 2025: strategies for growth and agility webinar 

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This quarter is about clarity and faster action. Below is what’s new at Rithum and what’s next for retailers and brands. Items are grouped so teams can jump straight to what they need. 

For retailers: new visibility now, shipping upgrades next 

New Retailer Home Page  

Get a near real-time view across the full order lifecycle, from pick-pack-ship through delivery. Start at a network-level overview, then drill into supplier summaries and order-level details to triage what’s late, at risk, or stalled. It’s built for scale and mirrors how teams actually work: network view to supplier view to order. 

Package Predictor  

Powered by RithumIQ, Package Predictor automatically predicts package weights and dimensions based on real-world shipping behaviors. For retailers using Shipping Optimization, those predictions flow into the label printing process to reduce manual guessing and avoid costly mis-selections. Accuracy stats are forthcoming once broader rollout data is in. 

Coming soon for retailers 

Shipping Optimization Control Center 

Update shipping logic in the platform instead of downloading and re-uploading spreadsheets. Manage supplier defaults, delivery rules, and order conditions in one place. 

Shipping Label Workspace 

See predicted shipments in one view with confidence indicators, then move trusted batches faster while reviewing edge cases. It pairs with Package Predictor so weights and dimensions appear alongside each label.  

Retailer Chatbot 

In pilot now with several of our retailers. You can ask questions like “What were my top-selling SKUs two weeks ago?” and pull platform guidance such as how to run supplier promotions.  

For brands: normalized financials, new marketplaces, and new locales 

Best Buy U.S. 

Best Buy U.S. is live. Reach a large, trusted audience in consumer electronics and home goods. Early adopters can qualify for $0 platform fees until 2026. 

New marketplaces 

• Temu (U.S.): Breakout marketplace with nearly 300 million monthly users globally. 

• Tillys: Specialty retailer for casual apparel, footwear, and accessories rooted in skate and surf culture. 

• BrandAlley U.K.: Curated flash-sale site that’s useful for seasonal sell-through and clearing inventory. 

New locales 

Expansions include Walmart Marketplace Chile, Amazon Ireland, and TikTok Shop in Ireland and Spain. Walmart Chile (coming soon). The marketplace sees about 84 million visits a year and is the first marketplace where we helped launch the Global Item Spec template to speed onboarding. 

Magic Mapper 

Automatically categorizes products across channels with a quick human-in-the-loop review. Powered by RithumIQ, Magic Mapper is designed to save hours of manual effort. 

Coming soon for brands 

Settlement Reports 

We’re centralizing settlement data in Rithum, starting with Walmart and eBay. Export order- and SKU-level detail, including fees, commissions, and taxes, so finance and operations can reconcile payouts in one place. 

Connect with your Rithum team to map next steps. Then read the 2026 commerce readiness index for data on where shoppers are buying, which channels are accelerating, and the levers that protect profit so you can prioritize what to deploy next. 

Curious how it all works? Join us November 12 for the Rithum Pulse: Q4 Product Showcase and get a closer look at the updates built to help your team move faster.

Madison Jarvis is Senior Product Marketer, Retailers, at Rithum. Micah McGuire is Senior Product Marketer, Brands, at Rithum. 

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A major global brand had an impossible task: onboarding 50,000 SKUs across five marketplaces in less than 48 hours. Manual categorization would have taken weeks.  

With RithumIQ, the AI engine embedded into the Rithum platform, 92% of the work was automated. Tens of thousands of products were accurately classified, with only the edge cases flagged for human review. 

The brand went live on schedule, with clean data and accurate categorization across every channel. 

This kind of story happens every day, thanks to the power of RithumIQ. Built on one of the world’s richest and most comprehensive commerce datasets, RithumIQ processes billions of product updates daily, repairs broken catalog data, shifts ad spend to top-performing SKUs, drives smarter fulfillment decisions in real time, flags pricing and inventory risks before they escalate, and surfaces actionable insights across every stage of the commerce cycle. It’s not an AI buzzword or bolt-on: it’s the foundational intelligence layer proven to turn operational complexity into measurable growth.  

How ‘AI hype’ has hurt commerce 

Commerce has been promised actionable AI for years. But most of what showed up wasn’t built to scale, focused on the right problems, or delivering actual ROI. Many so-called “AI” tools still rely on static rules that can’t adapt to real-world complexity. Dashboards multiply without simplifying decisions, leaving teams buried in low-priority insights. And content generation tools fail to meet marketplace standards, creating more rework than results. The AI promise is big, but the payoff falls short. 

What makes RithumIQ different 

When you use Rithum, you’re using RithumIQ. This means that every part of your product lifecycle, from onboarding and optimization to fulfillment and profitability, has been AI-enhanced with a focus on client outcomes by design. 

One retailer used capabilities powered by RithumIQ to stop a hidden profit drain: SKUs that appeared healthy but were quietly driving high returns and shipping losses. Another used RithumIQ insights to provide their customers with more accurate delivery dates, dynamically adjusting timelines based on warehouse availability, item type, and even day of the week. And those are just two small examples: more happen every day, at every commerce touchpoint. 

These are not empty AI promises, they’re AI results in practice. They’re daily outcomes, delivered at scale for Rithum’s clients. 

Here’s what RithumIQ means for you: 

Clean product data transformation and catalog readiness. RithumIQ automatically detects and fixes broken product data, fills in missing attributes, and recommends optimal category mappings based on billions of data points. This isn’t AI adding to your workload, it’s AI doing the heavy lifting. 

Real-time fulfillment optimization. When warehouses shift or carrier delays hit, RithumIQ helps your fulfillment decisions stay smart and your shipments stay on time. It recommends the best fulfillment strategy for every order and even adapts as conditions change, taking into account: 

• Inventory location 

• Carrier performance and cost 

• Promised delivery dates 

• Item characteristics and delivery region 

Dynamic ad and pricing optimization. RithumIQ reallocates your ad spend in real time, targeting the SKUs and channels delivering the highest conversion and margin lift. It tracks profitability (not just clicks) and refines performance daily. It also identifies: 

• Hidden profit leaks, such as high-return SKUs 

• Pricing strategies that erode margins 

• Supplier and channel ROI patterns over time 

Predictive insights and automated decision support. RithumIQ uses real-time commerce data spanning industries, geographies, and channels to identify demand shifts and predict what will sell where, and when. It can: 

• Anticipate trends before they surface 

• Tailor product content to marketplace audiences 

• Keeps product listings compliant with evolving channel requirements 

And because RithumIQ is embedded in the platform, these insights show up exactly where your teams need them. No separate and disjointed AI experiences. 

AI solution, built for AI-discovery. Your customers are increasingly asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI tools to give them shopping recommendations, and even buying within those tools directly. If your products aren’t structured in ways that an AI tool recognizes, they simply won’t show up. RithumIQ ensures that when AI-driven shopping assistants suggest products, yours are visible, discoverable, and recommended, by providing: 

• Structured data across SKUs, variants, and fulfillment models 

• Enriched content that’s optimized for machine understanding 

• Faster onboarding into marketplaces and retail media platforms 

RithumIQ is powering the future of commerce intelligence 

From smarter listings to optimized fulfillment to predictive insights, RithumIQ turns massive data into measurable results. And it gets smarter with every transaction. 

That’s the kind of AI that truly works for your team, your customers, and your bottom line. 

Learn more about RithumIQ and what it can do for you. 

Brandon Klein is Director, Product Marketing, at Rithum.

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Back-to-school (BTS) shoppers started earlier, spent more cautiously, and favored targeted value over blanket discounts. Back-to-school shopping was a stress test for holiday readiness. Here’s what the data tells us, and how to respond. 

Back-to-school sales: what changed and why it matters 

BTS shopping kicked off early this year, with 67% of K-12 and college shoppers already starting shopping by early July—the biggest early start since NRF began tracking the back to school season. Tariff-related price increases were a big driver, with half saying they moved faster into buy mode to avoid those hits.  

Families planned to spend $858 on average for K-12 (down from 2024), but total K-12 spend prediction ticked up to $39.4B, signaling more shopping despite tighter wallets. This might be because there’s not a ton of choice: if your kid needs new shoes for school, it’s not a discretionary purchase (vs. the holiday season, when gifts are not thought of as the same level of necessity). Online remains the top choice for 55% of consumers, with discount stores getting more traction as shoppers looked for value over loyalty.  

Households are distinguishing “need” vs. “want,” more than ever, expecting uneven price increases as tariffs and cost-of-living costs roll through the commerce world. More deal hunting, more shop-hopping, and more comparison across big events is the norm.  

These patterns—early research, cart building, and channel switching—mirror what we saw over the big summer sales events, and what we told you to prepare beforehand. 

That discretion has also affected buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) usage, which is rising into late summer. Consumers spent $7.8 billion via BNPL in July, up 16.6% yoy, a clear signal for Q4 budgets, according to Adobe Business. 

Key differences in 2025 back-to-school shopping

• Earlier start and longer purchase window. Families chipped away at lists during July events like Prime Day and Walmart Deals, then paused to wait for district lists and late-season apparel decisions, according to NRF.

• Targeted value offers beat blanket discounts. Shoppers respond to relevance (bundles, student perks, durability claims) as much as raw price. Deep, across-the-board cuts aren’t necessary to win the cart.

• Cross-channel comparison is the default. Pricing parity and clean content matter more than ever to prevent abandonment.

What we’re seeing in-market  

Several leading retailers we work with rode out BTS seasonality with no major promotions, and still saw strong demand. For most companies we’re working with who rely on BTS sales, they’ve had little paid push but are still finding that the calendar itself fueled conversion. 

In August, the following categories surged (and cooled): 

• Apparel and footwear stayed resilient as “needs,” helped by off-price and pointed promos, according to NRF. 

• Tech and audio sold well from July through college move-in (laptops, headphones, small appliances), according to Adobe. 

• Backpacks, lunch boxes, and calculators sold fast during July sales and when schools posted supply lists. 

• Shoppers chose store brands and value packs, but mid-season sales slowed and retailers sold fewer items, according to Circana. 

What will this mean for holiday season? 

Everything we’re seeing—value scrutiny, channel switching, event-day triangulation—will define peak shopping season. Here’s what you can expect:  

• Two conversion waves: early research, late-season purchase. Summer event shoppers researched early and converted when the price felt right; BTS saw the same, so expect more coming into the holidays. Plan two waves: early season list building and end season urgency. 

• Tariff news may shift purchase timing. If price-rise rumors accelerate, shoppers pay attention and try to get ahead. If it cools, more will likely look for promotions instead of focus on that anxiety of getting ahead. With the White House’s 90-day extension of the China tariff truce into mid-November 2025, shoppers may be more inclined to wait for big promos. But if the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s product exclusions are not extended beyond Aug. 31, some tariff-sensitive purchases could be pulled forward into September, according to KPMG. 

• More cart building, abandonment, and reactivation. Shoppers build their “list” within your cart, they look around for better deals. Track why shoppers are waiting (price watching, incomplete lists, budget staggering) and answer with saved carts, wishlist nudges, and price-drop alerts.  

Want more? Check out our primer on peak season preparedness.  

Meghan Barden is Director, Global Retail Media, Rithum.

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What is dropship?

With dropship, the retailer does not hold or manage inventory of the products they sell. Retailers partner with suppliers or brands that stock inventory and ship products directly to consumers on the retailer’s behalf. This allows them to add products and suppliers more easily and only pay for the products they sell.

Dropshipping gives retailers increased flexibility to easily add new products and suppliers. The business model reduces financial risk since retailers only pay for products they sell. There is no inventory management, which reduces the complexity of stock management and storage costs.

The business model is not without its challenges, as retailers using dropship can have lower profit margins than owned inventory since retailers aren’t buying in bulk. Retailers also can have less control of the customer experience with inventory and shipping managed by suppliers. Operating costs remain high when finding products, negotiating contracts and managing customer support. To combat these challenges, more retailers are turning to private marketplace business models.

What is a private marketplace?

A private marketplace, also known as a curated marketplace, is a retail business model that allows select, invited sellers to join and sell goods to a consumer from the retailer’s website.

Private marketplaces allow retailers to delegate costly activities required in a dropship model to suppliers including pricing, shipping costs, customer support and returns. The business model provides retailers increased scalability with the option to set global seller terms and conditions, replacing negotiations with individual suppliers. Retailers have more flexibility to test new vendors and products outside its usual product catalog to meet evolving consumer preferences.

Challenges include commissions of about 15% – 20% for each marketplace sale. It is also common to see increased shipping restrictions or more shipping methods because suppliers pay for shipping in the marketplace model, which can deter buyers. Retailers are also reliant on established supplier relationships, which can impact the quality and reliability of product offerings.

A hybrid dropship and private marketplace model

To meet evolving consumer demand, a combination of hybrid dropshipping and private marketplace models can fit your business’ needs. Retailers can use dropship to build out a 3P commerce program to offer a wider range of products without purchasing and stocking inventory. High-performing dropship products can then be shifted to your wholesale model, increasing your product margins.

Private marketplaces can expand 3P selling by giving retailers access to additional vendors and new products. As a result, retailers can test new categories and products with low risk. Products that sell can be moved to your dropship program.

Use technology to manage dropship and private marketplace

Managing dropship, private marketplace and hybrid retail models can be a cumbersome, time-consuming manual task. Instead of monitoring dropship and marketplace business models separately, retailers can launch and manage any partnership model through retail technology solutions like Rithum’s all-in-one solution.

Rithum streamlines dropship operations with easy transactions without the trouble of inventory management. This unified commerce solution also gives customers access to over 40,000 brands and retailers. Through Rithum, retailers can unify automated SKU conversions, performance insights and product discovery. Here are additional ways Rithum helps businesses manage dropship and private marketplace:

• Delivery and returns solutions use network data, real-time tracking information and best carrier selection in a single dashboard.
• Retailers can reach more consumers more effectively by launching paid search and shopping and product feed management to help optimize each sales channel.

Rithum simplifies supplier onboarding allowing retailers to onboard new sales channels faster with a single, intuitive portal equipped with reporting tools, progress tracking and support from Rithum employees.

Download the guide today.

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What is 3P commerce?

Third-party commerce is different for retailers compared with brands. For retailers, 3P commerce helps them access unowned inventory. This is a business model where brands sell products directly to consumers through a retailer’s storefront, typically through a dropship or marketplace approach. This model shifts inventory risk away from retailers, who instead act as facilitators between brands and consumers. For brands, 3P commerce helps them extend their owned inventory to unowned channels. This allows brands to reach more consumers through a multichannel selling strategy.

Marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart have led the way, allowing brands to reach more consumers without the need for extensive inventory management. Consumers shopped on Amazon and Walmart marketplaces 30% more in 2023 compared with 2022, according to 1Worldsync.

What is 1P commerce?

First-party (1P) commerce is where retailers purchase products directly from brands or manufacturers and then sell those products to consumers. In this model, the retailer owns the inventory and is responsible for managing it. This traditional approach has been the foundation of retail for decades, but challenges include inventory risks and scalability.

Rithum offers a hybrid model enabling brands and retailers to combine elements of both 3P and 1P models. This allows brands and retailers to leverage their strengths while mitigating risks.

Differences between 3P and 1P commerce

Depending on your needs, there are benefits to both 3P and 1P commerce models.

Inventory ownership

• 3P commerce: Brands retain ownership of the inventory; retailer facilitates the sale.
• 1P commerce: Retailers purchase and own the inventory.

Risk and investment

• 3P commerce: Reduced financial risks for retailers because they do not hold the inventory.
• 1P commerce: Higher inventory risks and capital investment for retailers.

Scalability

• 3P commerce: Offers immense scalability, allowing brands to reach wider audiences without the limitations of physical inventory management.
• 1P commerce: Scalability can be challenging due to inventory and warehousing constraints.

Flexibility

• 3P commerce: More flexibility allows sellers to adapt quickly to market changes and consumer demands.
• 1P commerce: Less flexible because the retailer is often in possession of inventory.

3P commerce popularity is growing

Over the last two decades, 3P commerce has outpaced traditional 1P models, becoming the leading ecommerce approach for sellers of all sizes. Sellers’ margins are tightening.

According to Alix Partners, margins have been squeezed by 60% over the last decade. 3P commerce offers a sustainable and profitable strategy for businesses.

Amazon’s 3P business has grown twice as fast as its 1P commerce since the launch of its marketplace in 2000, according to Statista. This shift continues as consumer behavior continues to change, with more shoppers preferring the convenience and additional choices provided when shopping through marketplaces.

Challenges and solutions in 3P commerce

While 3P commerce continues to grow, managing a multichannel selling strategy can be complex and costly to sellers. Rithum offers an automated solution and a platform that supports over 40,000 global brands, retailers, and suppliers. Our unified commerce network streamlines complex technologies, offering expansive reach across multiple marketplaces while significantly reducing time-to-market. Brands and retailers can quickly expand product assortment, boost customer engagement and loyalty, and attract new customers.

By simplifying and optimizing technology, Rithum empowers brands and retailers to sell and expand with the risks associated with traditional inventory management. Our solutions enable quick adaptation to changing market conditions, supporting dynamic changes in business models without the long lead times typically associated with such shifts.

Learn how Rithum for Brands suite of tools can help your business grow profitably. Schedule a personal demo today.

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