Weekly news: 4.000 e-shops on eMAG Marketplace, Romanians don’t complain much, the robots in e-commerce
More than 4.000 e-shops on eMAG Marketplace
eMag, the largest online retail platform in Romania, reached a number of over 4,000 partner companies registered on its marketplace at the end of June, up 74% over the same period last year. The eMAG marketplace is the retailer’s platform where partner companies can sell their products. The platform generated sales of over RON 350 million (EUR 76.6 million) in the first six months of this year. It has 500,000 unique customers each day, according to the company.
→ More details at Romania Insider
Report: Romanians don’t file too many complaints, compared to other Europeans
Romania and Cyprus are in the last positions in terms of filing complaints in e-commerce, with 52.5% and 52.4%, according to the EU’s Consumer Conditions Scoreboard. The average in the European Union is 60.3% and the Swedish consumers are the most active, with a 78.6% rate of complaints. The good part is that the conditions offered to Romanian consumers have improved significantly during 2014-2016.
→ More details on the JUST portal
Louis Vuitton Joins E-commerce Rush in China
Louis Vuitton joins the likes of Burberry, Gucci and Michael Kors in launching its monobrand e-commerce site in China, where digital luxury is still dominated by local giants such as Tmall and JD.com. Chinese consumers account for one in three luxury purchases globally, and are also at the forefront of digital development, reflected by the demise of physical retail formats like hypermarkets, the broad acceptance of digital payment solutions and the high e-commerce penetration in fast-moving consumer goods.
The robots in the e-commerce sector
According to a new report in the Wall Street Journal, machine learning is now making the robots more flexible and effective. Some of them are already inching into service. A subsidiary of robotics company Kuka sold its first picking robot in the U.S. to an unnamed retailer early this year, and the startup RightHand Robotics is testing its picking robots at a distribution center of the retailer Hudson’s Bay.
But experts say full commercialization of automated picking is at least a year away. Amazon is still funding research and competitions to develop the technology further.
