🏭 News Round-Up (Retail, E-comm & AI)

• Dr Martens has issued a profit warning due to ongoing issues with it’s US business. For the six months to Sep 2023, Dr Martens reported a 55% drop in pre-tax profit to £25.8k. (The Guardian)

• Primark is investing a further £43 million into it’s international expansion, opening five new stores in Italy. (TheRetailBulletin)

• Retail giant Walmart announces that it is not advertising on X, in the latest blow to the Elon Musk-owned site. (Reuters)

• Buy now pay later app Klarna has implemented a hiring freeze, with the CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski citing AI as the solution to tasks previously performed by humans. (The Telegraph)

• Strengthening its collectables operations, eBay invests in COMC, the ‘e-commerce home for trading card enthusiasts‘. (eBay)

• Fashion outlet Victoria’s Secret posts $71million loss in Q3, with net sales down 4% to $1.3 billion. in Q3 2022 the retailer turned a $22.2 million profit. (Just Style)

👤 Crackdown On E-commerce ‘Dark Patterns’

The Indian CCPA (Central Consumer Protection Authority) has announced some pretty extensive and interesting guidelines for Indian e-commerce businesses to follow.

The new guidelines being enforced state that businesses using the practice of ‘dark patterns’ to trick users into unintended actions face penalties.

But it’s not just in India where consumers are being unnecessarily pressured, it’s happening to all of us. Let’s break this down.

Some examples of Dark Patterns include:

• Confirm Shaming - where users are guilt-tripped or panicked into selecting an option, often a tick box. E.g. "I want to miss out on amazing deals and stay uninformed. I don't like saving money."

• Hidden Costs - Where prices become unexpectedly more expensive at checkout.

• Roach Motel - A situation that’s easy to get in but hard to leave. For example, one-click subscriptions which requires a call to cancel.

• Trick Questions - For example: "Are you certain you want to cancel your membership and forfeit all the perks you've enjoyed so far?”

There are many more. But the published guidelines go on to state that adding paid services automatically with a pre-selected box will be called "basket-sneaking" - a new one for the long list.

Even the common use of travel sites stating “Only 3 rooms left! 25 people are looking at this right now“ is considered a dark pattern.

The use of Dark Patterns isn’t anything new. There have been plenty of big names who have been found guilty of using dark patterns.

• Epic Games was fined $520 million for using dark patterns to coerce players into making unwanted in-game purchases.

• Amazon was found guilty of not making it easy enough for users to cancel their Prime subscriptions, following complaints from large consumer groups.

• Facebook & Google were both fined last year for misleading use of cookie consent.

The CCPA is tackling this head-on, setting an example to many, having released "Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns" on the 30th of November.

This guidance now applies to all platforms in India that offer goods and services, including advertisers, sellers, and marketplaces.

The Outpost’s Opinion: This is a smart and carefully planned move. E-commerce is becoming a chaotic place for selling products. It will be interesting to see how effectively this is implemented and if it will inspire others to take similar large-scale action.

🤖 ChatGPT: One Year Later

Happy 1st birthday to ChatGPT 🎂

November 30th marked one whole year of the AI revolution, and what better way to mark it than with Sam Altman officially being reinstated as CEO of OpenAI.

Other developments include:

• Mira Murati returns to CTO position.

• Greg Brockman returns as President.

• A new board is in place consisting of all new faces. They are Bret Taylor (Chair), Adam D’Angelo and Larry Summers.

• As for Ilya Sutskever - Altman said discussions were ongoing as to how he can continue his work.

But it’s not just the board that has changed one year on. Our use and understanding of Generative AI have become, well, the norm.

Since the launch of ChatGPT, the acceptance and integration of AI have increased tenfold. To give you an idea of how we’ve adapted to it:

• AI will contribute over $15 trillion to the Global Economy by 2030.

• The global AI market size is expected to grow 37% every year until 2030.

• 42% of companies now use AI in their business.

• 97% of mobile phone users use AI-powered voice commands

The below graph shows the Google search interest in AI since ChatGPT launched in November 2022.

After its release, ChatGPT reached 1 million users in just 5 days. A year later it now has over 180 million users. But its effect has been much greater.

The launch of ChatGPT has brought an accessible Generative AI product to market, the first of its kind, enlightening the world to understand the possibilities AI has.

The change is being reflected in business too, with the need for AI talent in increasing substantially, and is already proving difficult for many innovative businesses.

But it’s impacting businesses in other ways too, with automation becoming easier than ever. From pulling and summarising data to handling customer queries, AI is becoming the norm for employees and customers alike.

But this is just the start. From banking to social care, driverless cars and agriculture, there isn’t a single industry AI won’t impact in the years to come.

Just remember that 2023 was the year that ChatGPT became the catalyst for change.

The Outpost’s Opinion: It’s incredible the journey AI has taken since it first came into existence in the 1950’s. But the acceleration of learning over the past 12 months is astonishing. Our comprehension of what we understand now is just the tip of the iceberg of what is to come.

🔎 The Most Read Wikipedia Pages Of 2023

Remember what you search for in 2023? …No? Well, Wikipedia does.

The English Wikipedia raked in more than 84 billion views this year. As someone who used to work in SEO, that blows my mind.

But marketers gain a lot of inciteful information from Wikipedia and not just through reading their articles. By analysing the pageviews of their top articles in 2023, we can understand a lot about trends, public interest, web culture, regional variations, global awareness and much more.

The top 25 English Wikipedia pages based on pageviews:

1. ChatGPT - 49,490,406 pageviews 

2. Deaths in 2023 - 42,666,860

3. 2023 Cricket World Cup - 38,171,653

4. Indian Premier League - 32,012,810

5. Oppenheimer (film) - 28,348,248

6. Cricket World Cup - 25,961,417

7. J. Robert Oppenheimer - 25,672,469

8. Jawan (film) - 21,791,126

9. 2023 Indian Premier League - 20,694,974

10. Pathaan (film) - 19,932,509

11. The Last of Us (TV series) - 19,791,789

12. Taylor Swift -19,418,385

13. Barbie (film) - 18,051,077

14. Cristiano Ronaldo - 17,492,537

15. Lionel Messi - 16,623,630

16. Premier League - 16,604,669

17. Matthew Perry - 16,454,666

18. United States - 16,240,461

19. Elon Musk - 14,370,395

20. Avatar: The Way of Water - 14,303,116

21. India - 13,850,178

22. Lisa Marie Presley - 13,764,007

23. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - 13,392,917

24. Russian invasion of Ukraine - 12,798,866

25. Andrew Tate - 12,728,616

So what does this tell us?

For starters, AI (and specifically ChatGPT) is the top topic of curiosity, and by some distance too. While Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter got him on the list and cricket is surprisingly high in the batting order, with four mentions in the top 10.

But we can do much better than that. This sort of data is great for marketers and businesses to inform social listening, content marketing, product alignment and regional variations.

For example, a travel agency could use this data to talk about travel destinations featured in the film Oppenheimer and The Last of Us in their next blog post.

Alternatively, if an e-commerce store operates internationally, it could tailor its messaging in India to incorporate cricket-related content due to its popularity.

You may be surprised how many large brands use data like this to inform brand strategy. But it is a great data piece for smaller businesses too, if the topics align to your target audience.