Global Digital Marketing & Retail by Alex 72
Inspiration from across the world for retail enthusiasts, e-commerce professionals, marketing lovers and technology fans. Welcome back! I summarized some great links again, I stumbled upon this week.
🥳Happy 2025! And a list with AI tools to try in 2025!
First of all, I want to wish every reader a happy and healthy 2025! Let’s make it a great (crossborder) year! Lot’s of things will happen. Says not only me, but also the good old financial times:
Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/IiRSa
Paywalled: https://www.ft.com/content/9978baaf-1f48-4e2c-bcfc-dc34d48e6e4c
And a list of AI tools to play with in the beginning of 2025:
More and clickable via: https://a16z.com/apps-unwrapped/
🇹🇭 Uniqlo self checkout: works like a charm
Usually when I travel in Asia, I visit Uniqlo, just to buy a couple of clothes as I travel often lightly onwards. I have to say the Uniqlo self checkout is so convenient. I do not understand why not more retailers have this system. Just drop your basket in the self checkout and via RFID the system detects the items and calculates the amount you have to pay. Just a few clicks further you can even choose “buy now pay later” or even “split payments”. Unfortunately I forgot to test what this split payment exactly is and how it works. Anyway great checkout system and interface, reduces human error, and speeds up the checkout process. Often in Asia there can be long lines at the staffed checkout.
🛫AirAsia E-mail marketing
I like AirAsia. Unfortunately I only flew once with them this year (fan of the company). But even based at this one flight, they made up a really nice e-mail, I think.
It is highly personalised, I recognize everything in the email.
It makes me dream away of new traveling.
There is a discount for a destination I like directly in the e-mail
The future prediction is very nice! (probably correct also in my case)
The loyalty points are displayed on top
It uses the info, they have on me purchasing extra luggage space
Landingpage gives directly and easy option to re-book my last flight
They promote their superapp pretty well.
It lags in my opinion the “enabling stories” part, enabling /sharing something nice based on the trip or future trips. Also when clicking on the promotion with the “wrapped2024” promotion code, it does not confirm that code on the landingpage. I think better to activate that directly and display that also.
🎉Hoezee: the paypers Global E-commerce report 2025 is out
It’s quite extensive and very international so a must have to have for everyone interested in global e-commerce and payments.
where AI-powered systems can analyse customer data to determine their preferred payment methods and offer personalised recommendations. Online fashion retailer Zalora, which operates across Singapore, Malaysia,the Philippines, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, uses AI to drive specific consumer checkout behaviours based on previousshopping journeys. This helps the online retailer have more efficient back-end operations by leveraging data from the AI-powered customer service chatbot to provide seamless and personalised customer support.
The FX revolution in your digital wallet Digital wallets have come a long way from just storing your money – they’re now set to transform how FX transactions happen. Traditionally, banks act as the intermediaries for these transactions, causing delays and imposing fees. By cutting out the middlemen and using fintech infrastructures like blockchain and RTP systems, digital wallets enable near-instant FX conversions with lower fees.
Alternative Payment Methods (APMs) accounted for 66% of global ecommerce transactions in 2024 and are projected to grow to 82% by 2030, driven by consumer preferences, technological advancements, and regional adoption of methods like digital wallets, real-time payments, and Buy Now, Pay Later solutions."
Direct download via my dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/7n0gf9s5gibiim7kcl8dl/global-ecommerce-report-2025.pdf?rlkey=bm1uc91slqqlddcwvfhld278e&st=fpnwoto5&dl=0
Or via Paypers themselves: https://thepaypers.com/reports/global-ecommerce-report-2025/r1271283
📘Book Snippet & template: Mindshift from Brian Solis (part 2)
I wrote about the book “Mindshift” from Brian Solis last week, and I promised to have a follow up this week. It’s really a great book. I encourage to buy it. Let me highlight here the strategic trend analysis.
This exercise, as described in Mindshift, is a strategic framework for evaluating trends or innovations across multiple dimensions, such as business impact, risk, and market alignment. It helps organizations prioritize opportunities, identify potential threats, and allocate resources effectively.
Now for your -and my own- convenience I made a template with a radar chart, as described in the book, in Google Sheets, feel free to use it (make a copy)
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Link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lxludepvHfLmvjo9v3FK3oAn4uDMUthAzloxzyRjORk/edit?usp=sharing
Buy the book: https://www.amazon.com/Mindshift-Embracing-Unlimited-Possibilities-Visionary/dp/1394198590
🇭🇰 Chungking Mansions: where cultures and commerce collide
People — it’s what makes this place a living cultural treasure. Everyone here has a story, and each new day you spend here you hear a new one.
Chungking Mansions, a remarkable place in Hong Kong. A place where something is always happening. A place where I had one of the worst hotel rooms I’ve ever stayed in, but also one of the most convenient ones, a place where you can make new friends or discover great food. A mystique place, where cultures collide, there are always bargains, and stories are born in every corner. Phones, watches, clothes, everything is available. It’s chaotic, gritty, and unforgettable—a true Hong Kong experience.
At my latest visit to HK I visited CM again just for fun and to look with a retail perspective, not for staying this time. Indeed some things have changed as the Financial Times wrote, they have a pretty well organised shopping mall on the first few floors now, but also some of the past chaos is still there.
So read the FT & Medium article on it, a must read for everyone interested in retail and something to remember visiting when you visit HK some day.
Original: https://www.ft.com/content/4c0f90ac-1068-46ec-bb6a-b27f21af6210
Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/yosij
And also interesting:
https://medium.com/@michael_m_clements/enter-the-mansion-a-journey-into-chungking-1a6b15d73b20
Check also the video for an impression
🤖The future of (software) support → AI LLM help
I wrote on it earlier, that this trend is coming, nowadays things very rapidly improve it won’t be long before integrations take place. Checkout this video where Google Gemini 2.0 helps a user editing a video on Adobe Premiere. This will have huge impact on current support centers, but also greatly help productivity, onboarding and problem solving of software and services.
Implications/questions for business among AI powered help:
Use your own AI help LLM or rely on public ones like gemini.
If you build your own, what are the boundaries (f.e. interoperability).
AI agents handling multiple software solutions, that will happen. The question is how to deal with it: system failures, data sharing etc.
Checkout the previous edition:
🇭🇰 Hong Kong MTR tourist QR code at Sheung Wang Station
📖 Book Snippet: Mindshift from Brian Solis
📧Forbes: E-mail Marketing 2025 alert: prepare now
🇨🇳 Payment in Chinese restaurant: NFC chip with Alipay
📢Microsoft Clarity and Google Ads become friends
🏭B2B Marketing tactics for 2025
That’s it for this edition.
Thank you for reading, liking and subscribing,