Gartner 2023 Predicts: Brands Must Focus On Composability, AI, and Building Consumer Trust

The eCommerce industry is constantly evolving to meet market demands and economic conditions. Each year Gartner makes market predictions and recommendations based on research and trends. 

Here’s what Gartner predicts:
“By 2026, the speed of digital innovation will improve by 60%, relative to 2022, for organizations that have established mechanisms to reuse composable digital commerce modules.” 

“By 2026, 30% of sales organizations will use virtual assistants for improving seller’s efficiency and effectiveness, compared to less than 1% currently.”

“By 2027, 20% of customers who ordered from enterprise marketplaces in 2022 will retreat from them due to ethical concerns and lack of trust.”

Read on for a deeper dive into these predictions.

Improve Cost-Effectiveness with Modular and Composable Technologies

     "By 2026, the speed of digital innovation will improve by 60%, relative to 2022, for organizations that have established mechanisms to reuse composable digital commerce modules."

The current global economic tensions are leading to margin compression in which the cost to make a product or deliver a service rises faster than the sales of the product or service. Inevitably, this leads to lower profit margins.
The brands that seek to  survive and overcome it must increase revenue or create cost efficiencies. 

Composable technologies increase the pace of innovation and the cost efficiency of investing in it because the components are reusable. This means that brands do not have to develop similar functionality across different applications or duplication development work across multiple business teams. Core commerce modules can be reused across applications, which increases speed-to-market and saves time and money on development work.

Modular commerce applications are also deployed and updated independently, improving agility and again increasing speed-to market

Gartner predicts that organizations that centrally develop and maintain composable modules will see great improvements in innovation. Innovation is something that brands cannot afford to slow down in today’s economy with higher competition and fewer buyer purchases.

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Brands Should Consider Leveraging AI for Seller-Efficiency

     By 2026, 30% of sales organizations will use virtual assistants for improving seller’s efficiency and effectiveness, compared to less than 1% currently.”

     By 2027, 20% of customers who ordered from enterprise marketplaces in 2022 will retreat from them due to ethical concerns and lack of trust.”

With concerns of an economic slowdown,  Gartner suggests implementing AI and ML-powered virtual assistants (VA) to save seller time and effort.

These VAs can be used to automate simple common sales tasks such as managing CRM data, sales lead nurturing and answering buyer’s FAQs. While more complex tasks, like speaking  with customers on a personal level  and contract negotiations  would be left to the sellers.

Sellers can also leverage VAs and AI-capabilities for scheduling the next meeting, demoing the product or following up with stakeholders.

Virtual assistants are also becoming popular for B2C brands for tasks such as capturing leads, product recommendations and product demos. Virtual chatboxes are also gaining traction for retailers to help reduce cart abandonment and create a more streamlined and interactive experience as shown in the example below.

Brands Must Rebuild Consumer Trust

     By 2027, 20% of customers who ordered from enterprise marketplaces in 2022 will retreat from them due to ethical concerns and lack of trust.”

With poor customer experiences on marketplaces, consumers will begin to distrust marketplaces for future purchases.  A poor experience with one seller can create a domino effect and damage consumer confidence in other sellers.  A study from Qualtrics found that 50% of consumers decreased or entirely cut spending with a brand after a bad customer experience. That same report found that globally, organizations risk 6.7% of their revenue or $3.1, when they lose customers due to poor experiences.

Marketplace operators will need to offer features that reestablish trust and monitor seller behavior such as tracking seller reviews, authenticating reviews, and validating the authenticity of products.

They also need to establish processes to authenticate seller and product information and monitor suspicious behavior. The more protocols that are put in place to prevent negative and fraudulent customer experiences, the more trust consumers will have in purchasing from those brands.

You can read the full report on Gartner's 2023 predictions here.