Own Your Digital Journey & Control Destiny

When reflecting on significant milestones in retail e-commerce, it's impossible to ignore that we arecurrently experiencing a major watershed moment with GenAI and LLM technologies, second only to the introduction of e-commerce itself. However, the rapid pace of change and the subsequent waves of hype cycles make it challenging to fully grasp the lasting impacts of these advancements.

Considering this, it's undeniable that Covid has had a transformative effect, especially in grocery e-commerce. While the industry was already growing steadily before the pandemic, it was largely perceived as a nice-to-have luxury offering by both consumers and retailers. Before the pandemic, with a market share of around 3-4%, most analysts projected that it would take until 2024/25 to reach 10% or more. The fact that we’re now likely looking at 20%+ by 2025 makes these early projections seem quaint by comparison and serve as stark reminder of why it’s now more important than ever for retailers to have a plan to control their destiny by owning their end-to-end digital commerce experiences.

Steve Paro

SVP Product Strategy and Head, Upshop Innovation Labs

Year of Retail Evolution