Uncovering the Market: USA

episode Transcript

Podcast Intro

You’re listening to Gateway to Ecommerce, a podcast by ClearSale. In this series, global ecommerce leaders discuss challenges, best practices, new tech, and secrets to success. And now your hosts, David and Denise.

Denise Purtzer

Hello, and welcome to today’s Gateway to Ecommerce Podcast. I’m Denise, and I’m here with David, my cohost.

David Fletcher

Hello, everyone. How are you today, Denise?

Denise Purtzer

I’m great. And it’s fun, because today we’re talking about another country focus. We’re going to talk about the USA.

David Fletcher

Yeah, that’s really exciting, because we’ve spent some time ... we’ve talked about Australia, we’ve talked about Mexico, and today we get to talk about the U.S., and that’s going to be fun. That’s going to be exciting. So happy to be covering that material today.

Denise Purtzer

It is. And every time we bring up the country specifics, it’s always interesting to dig in a little bit deeper, because there are specific things that happen country by country that you might not realize on an everyday basis. So today we’re going to cover a little bit about the shoppers and the shopping habits. We’re going to talk about some of the stats over time, as well as more recent ones, and then things you need to do as an online retailer specifically to sell it to the US. So given that, let’s talk about the shoppers. Share with me a little bit about what’s going on with some buying habits here in the U.S.

David Fletcher

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the first things I would say is, “Who are the shoppers?” Everybody. It really feels like today, everyone is shopping online. I use my parents as an example. My parents were always anti-shopping when it came to putting a credit card online or anything like that. And due to COVID, of course, that changed things. And even today, they still shop online. They still are taking advantage of ecommerce and making a lot of online purchases. And it seems like ... I mean, look at it. We’re all working from home today. Look out your window throughout the day, and you see a lot of UPS. You see a lot of FedEx. You see the Instacart.

There’s so much going on today. It’s unreal. Obviously, it’s unprecedented as well. But when you start thinking about the largest segment of ecommerce buyers, it seems like it’s that 25- to 34-year-old group there. And following, that’s the 35- to 44-year-old group. And part of that, because they grew up online, right? They grew up with certainly much more technology than some of us did. And I don’t want to say that I’m one of those, but I’m certainly above that 44 category. So for some of these other groups, doing things online comes natural for them, and making purchases — it’s just another part of life.

Denise Purtzer

That’s so true. We were looking at breaking that down a little bit more. Seventy-five percent of the shoppers are doing so at least once a month. And we were talking about the fact that, gosh, we’d like to see those stats on a weekly basis, too, because as you were talking about looking out the window and seeing the deliveries happening, it’s funny, because you don’t even think about the orders that you make online or know what your spouse is ordering online. And it’s like, “Okay. Is that for me or not?” And you don’t even know if that check is coming to you or not because it’s just that shopping happens.

David Fletcher

Yeah. That is so true. And it’s funny, my home office is on the front of the house and so I get to see the trucks pull up and when they pull up, one of the first things I think is what did I order? I’m excited because it’s here.

Denise Purtzer

I know.

David Fletcher

Unfortunately, I’m in a pretty large household with four sons still at home and my wife, so I’m not the only buyer online. So it’s not always mine. This is a great example. We needed a new mailbox and instead of going to Home Depot or Lowe’s, that would be local in town, we got online. I made my purchase at Home Depot and it showed up two days later, here it is and I didn’t have to go to the store. I didn’t have to go through that whole process and spend time out of my home.

I was able to make that purchase and get it installed. And it’s very convenient. It’s convenient, it’s easy. You’re right. When you think about 75% of online shoppers once a month, the numbers for once a week have to be pretty high as well.

Denise Purtzer

I would think so.

David Fletcher

Right? Because it’s become a way of life for most of us. We all do it, and whether it’s things that are out of necessity or nice-to-haves, it’s how we’re, we’re doing it. So U.S. shoppers will still buy in-person groceries. There are still people that want to go to the grocery store and they want to pick their own bag of apples, right? I get that, that they do exist. And there are some people that will even ... same thing. I just talked about the Home Depot or Lowe’s or any home improvement store. They want to go and visit those stores and see it in person to make that purchase. But when you think about the surge of ecommerce, it’s really, it’s starting to pass a lot of the brick-and-mortar segments.

So when you look at like toys and books and movies and video games, et cetera, those purchases are certainly more popular to be online. But some of the other ones like consumer electronics, sports equipment, health and beauty, things like that, there’s still a lot going on there on the brick-and-mortar side. It is interesting to see how it’s changing it and how it continues to grow.

Denise Purtzer

That’s true. And just like the example you said about the mailbox, it is changing too, because you might want to go into a store originally, but now with the health conditions as they are, people are thinking, “Well, I can just get it online and get it just as easily.” So those habits, it’ll be interesting to see what sticks moving forward and how those habits will influence future numbers as well.

David Fletcher

Yeah. And one of the other data points that we were learning as we’ve been doing some research and really preparing to share some of this information about the U.S. market, most Americans — and it’s roughly 45% under the age of 55 — they’re spending between $65 and $259 a month in their online shopping. And about 27% are spending over $260 a month. Now those data points, those are pre-COVID. Even still before that, the numbers are still pretty impressive.

You know what’s funny is we were learning about this. Only 10% of Canadians in that age group spend over $260, which is interesting. And I think part of that, and you and I have both spent a lot of time in Canada, there are parts of Canada that are very similar to any major city in the U.S., right? We’ve been to Toronto and some of the other places, but then as you start heading west, it does change drastically, and I think that might be part of the reason why that number looks the way it does.

If I were a merchant looking to grow my business in the Canadian market, that’s one of the things I’d be paying attention to, and I’d be more focused on how do I ship into these larger cities and focus on that, and not worry about all of Canada. Because you’re going to have outliers, no doubt, and I don’t want to turn this into a Canadian podcast, but I easily could, but those are things to think about as a merchant starting your business. In the U.S. and Canada, a lot of people tend to think of it being the same, but it’s really not.

Denise Purtzer

That’s true. And the other thing is too, you were talking about, you’ve got the four teenage boys at home and in that spending of $65 to $259 a month, that could easily double just on groceries alone if you’re ordering these online.

David Fletcher

So true.

Denise Purtzer

Especially for a household like yours, right?

David Fletcher

So true, Denise. Let me tell you two gallons of milk a day minimum guaranteed. Yeah. You are correct on that. That’s our weekly grocery bill is about 350.

Denise Purtzer

If we broke this down by state, Maryland would be skyrocketing right now just for the household.

David Fletcher

That’s right. You’ve just got to get these kids out of here. The colleges need to open up, so I can start sending my boys out.

Denise Purtzer

So now that we’re thinking about who the buyer is, you hinted a little bit about what the merchants need to be thinking about, and I think that’s it’s important to consider that the U.S. is the world’s largest economy. So obviously, if you’re in the U.S., it’s easy to market, and you’re selling into the U.S. But one of my prior jobs took me quite often to China at the time, and this was probably about 10 years ago. The Chinese merchants were trying to figure out ways to sell to the U.S. and some markets in the U.S. And I don’t think that that’s rare by any means. Everybody wants a piece of the U.S. action.

You’ve got buyers that are purchasing online, and it makes it quite easy in a lot of ways. You’ve got high internet penetration, so people are able to get online and make purchases. I mean, it’s almost 90% internet penetration. So thinking about those sorts of things, let’s talk a little bit more about merchants and what they can do, and even on a vertical basis.

David Fletcher

Yeah. When you start thinking about those verticals, it’s funny, because every time we look at these numbers and we start looking at some of our customers, and I’m talking with our enterprise sales team about some of their target accounts. Automotive comes up, and it comes up a lot. You even have a couple of platforms that you’re working with on the partnership side that are focused on automotive. And it’s amazing that because of technology, because of YouTube, there are things that people can do themselves.

So any merchant that is offering a product that typically we needed to change something, put a new, I don’t know, a new switch on our power window in our car. Good Lord, we wouldn’t even want to touch that. We would take that to the shop, and we’d have it worked on. But with technology and with ecommerce today, now you could go online, you could do some research. You’re like, “Wow, that’s really easy to change. Why did they charge me $400 to do that 10 years ago?”

You could get in there, and you can buy the things that you need and do the work yourself. So when you start thinking about those segments, that’s what a lot of the segments are. The segments are tied to things that people are starting to do more of themselves. They’re not going out and getting service. Years ago, I had a shoe membership, and I would go and my feet would get measured and talking to me about all the different new styles of shoes, and the heel, and the padding, and all the support.

Today, it’s like, “Ah, I could go online and I could buy the $250, $300 pair of shoes just the same. And if I’m not happy with it, I can turn around and send it right back.” So that really has influenced a lot of the segments, but automotive, the vehicle parts, any kind of clothing, shoes, apparel like that, home and gardens, sporting goods, especially sporting goods with busy families that are trying to keep their children ... you have to keep them equipped. They need cleats. They need equipment. They need whatever. And it’s easier to just continuously work online to find not only the equipment, but find the equipment at the best price possible at the fastest shipping possible.

Denise Purtzer

That’s so true. And I think that we as American consumers are used to buying products from other countries, right? So we’re not worried like the automotive segment, aftermarket parts and things like that. It doesn’t matter where it’s manufactured because chances are it’s manufactured elsewhere. So that gives those merchants that opportunity to come in, and you have a better selling proposition based on price or availability or speed to get to that consumer. Because like you were saying, they watched their YouTube video. They want to fix it. So they need the parts to do it.

David Fletcher

That’s right, that’s right.

Denise Purtzer

But that also takes us to the fact that we’re a highly competitive marketplace. I mean, we are the origination of Walmart and Amazon and all of the big beasts out there in commerce, which means if you’re entering into the space in United States, you’re not going to be the only one doing it. So plenty of massive players in the markets, and you have to consider the fact that you’re going to have to do a lot of things to stand out.

But you’ve also coupled that with the fact that there is no one tax. It’s not like the E.U. where it’s by country or things like that. I was talking to a tax-compliance company, Avalara, at a conference one time, and they were explaining that there’s this one street in Denver, that on that street, there are three different taxations within five households. So across the street, they’re going to have a different tax than the neighbor across the street.

Four houses down is going to have a different tax as well, because you’ve got so much growth and so much convergence in different municipalities and all these sorts of things. So as a merchant, you really have to consider that going into it, because if you’re not taxing correctly or having somebody handle that on your behalf, you’re really going to get in trouble at the end of the day.

David Fletcher

That’s very, very true. I sit in Maryland, and there are some large Amazon facilities here. And because I am in the area that would get taxed by Amazon, there was quite a while that Amazon was not charging tax and we didn’t have those regulations and the state requirement. And that changed. That probably changed about a year and a half, two years ago. Now, I do pay taxes.

So it’s interesting, because I am 15 minutes from Delaware, and my son who lives in Delaware can order the same thing from Amazon and not pay taxes. Yet I have to pay 6% and we’ll get it same shipping time like there’s nothing different. I just have to pay taxes. And we’re using Amazon, who obviously is prepared for that. But for some of the smaller merchants, if you’re not up to speed and you’re not aware of these things, it can get extremely complex.

And the last thing you want is to have tax issues with the state. We’ve had some people actually ask us, because we get a lot of those questions because they want help and they view us as a trusted resource, and they start asking us, is it taxed by where I am, taxed by where I’m sending it? And we start getting into this big conversation. It’s like, “Hey, we’re not tax advisors. However, we can point you in the right direction.”

But you’re right, it’s extremely complex. And adding to that logistics and shipping, that’s also challenging. As we talked about, it’s a very competitive marketplace. I mean, so competitive that it’s grown from 274 billion just a few years ago in 2017 to 2019 was 365. We’re talking about 600 billion by 2024. It’s going to continue to get more and more competitive.

So as a merchant, what are you going to do to stand out? What are you going to do to be different? How do you get that buyer to come to your site versus the other 10 sites that might be selling the same or a very similar product at a very similar price point?

Denise Purtzer

Absolutely. The logistics piece, as you mentioned too, could make it more difficult as well, because if Amazon’s got warehouses in areas that are going to take you three days to ship to, and they can get it there overnight, we’re definitely a society that’s like, “Okay, I’m going to order it on Saturday, get it on Sunday” mentality. And that weighs in to that purchase decision-making almost as much as pricing at times. So it’s almost like you have to consider pricing, you have to consider logistics and getting it there — all of those things to be on the competitive playing field as of the other big players.

David Fletcher

Exactly. And I’m glad you brought that up and actually finished my thought for me, because that’s where I was headed, because it’s exactly that, right? Amazon is the big white elephant in the corner that has us all trained for that instant gratification that, “Hey, no problem. I can get online today. If I have the Amazon prime membership, I can place my order and chances are I have it tomorrow or the day after.”

That causes a lot of issues for the mid-size merchant, because you’ve got to find ways to keep up and really be able to compete with that. And even though you don’t feel like you’re competing with Amazon, the problem is Amazon is setting the bar.

Denise Purtzer

Yeah. They’ve got 38% of the online market share. So obviously they’re doing something right, right?

David Fletcher

Right.

Denise Purtzer

So we have to consider not to be followers, but how do you stand apart? It’s just like you said. I think the other interesting facet to when we started thinking about this topic today was the fact that US is a little bit unique in the fact that we’ve got social influencers that are definitely making impact on the buying habits of consumers here in the US. I started thinking about why the psychological factors and the implications, and I think it’s probably because of the fact that we’re the only ones with Hollywood, right?

David Fletcher

Right.

Denise Purtzer

Hollywood and the stars, and that whole thing back to the day when stars would be advertising different things. It definitely goes beyond that with influencers, because the celebrities have to have a following. But you see different case studies around that where influencer marketing, which is really about $6.5 billion in the industry, is having an impact. You think a few years back like in 2016, it was like a third that much.

So it’s definitely having an impact. We’re starting to see that emerge in the U.K. as well, but really in the U.S., it’s very unique and the fact that that’s having an impact on sales overall.

David Fletcher

Yeah, so true. When you go back and think about what I said earlier with the 25-year-old to 34-year-old being the largest segment of ecommerce buyers, they’re in tune with I guess, for lack of better terms, what’s hip and what’s not. So when you start looking at these influencers and seeing what they’re posting and how they’re influencing the market and their followers, the 25-to-34, even the 40-year-olds that pay attention to that, they do get influenced. And it does matter to them.

I have a 15-year-old son that’s an avid runner, and he recently shared with us some information about a pair of shoes that he just felt like he had to have. And all of his information came from Instagram, came from a social media influencer that was basically convincing him that he needed this particular shoe.

It didn’t even come from the manufacturer or the retailer, the merchant themselves — it’s coming from the influencer. I think that’s important because it just doesn’t work with my 15 year old son. There’s a 25-year-old out there that’s an avid runner that said, “Hey, yeah, I want that.” Well, that 25-year-old has a job that can buy it; my 15-year-old does not. So the sale broke down at that point. But that does happen, that does exist, and there’s going to be a lot of that.

That’s a big part for merchants when they’re thinking about the U.S. And if I’m not in the U.S. today and I want to break into the U.S. as a merchant, you’re going to need that. That will help you and that will help your brand so that you’re not viewed as a subpar or just a foreign entity. It’s important to have that U.S. support and that influence on the market.

Denise Purtzer

And it doesn’t have to be to the level of the Kardashians, right?

David Fletcher

Right.

Denise Purtzer

Like we’re getting $1.2 million to do a post because they’ve got the influence to garner that essentially. But there are definitely social influencers in different circles that you could gather and their different marketing networks and things like that, that help you work with them as well. So that’s something else that you can tackle and try to make yourself stand out a little bit more, too.

David Fletcher

Yep. Without a doubt. What do you think we talk a little bit about some of the product categories? Let’s talk about risks, because I think it’s important that we share information like that to help a merchant that is either coming to the U.S. or looking at maybe a new product line to expand. I’d like to make sure that we share some of that, because for every dollar of fraud committed, U.S. retailers incur about $3.13 in cost. And we’ve been talking about that. We talk about that all the time, especially when we’re talking to prospects and giving presentations or speaking at conferences.

We can talk more about those costs. So we actually have a webinar that we did back in, I guess it would have been right around the holidays or just after the holidays where we talk a lot about the opportunity costs and the direct cost and indirect cost of that $1 and how it gets to $3.13.

I think that’s great data point for merchants, especially the small and the mid-market merchants to pay attention to, because you want to be aware of your fraud rate. You want to be aware of your industry and your segment and what do you have at risk. Those are some of the things that I think we should share, and we’ll get into some of those categories in a second. But one of the things I also wanted to mention is freight forwarders.

Freight forwarders are common and getting more common, because there’s companies now that are setting up marketplaces for freight forwarders to work through. And that gives a U.S. merchant an opportunity to essentially get their product anywhere in the world. And with that comes high risk. For example, we know that in Miami and Brooklyn, they have extremely high fraud rates because of the freight forwarders that exist there.

We’ve done some work with freight forwarders, and we know some of those issues. Just to give you a simple example, the sale goes through the process. It gets approved, and you as the merchant now send it off to the freight forwarder. Well, the buyer gets that information, because they have to get their tracking while they have that. Well, now for them, all they have to do is reach out to that freight forwarder as a fraudster and change the address, change the shipping.

There’s all kinds of things they could do, because they’re now working with a freight forwarder who isn’t doing fraud checks. That’s not their line of business. That’s not what they’re doing. Their job is to get the product overseas. And so there’s a lot of risks there. Just anything that would involve a freight forwarder, you have a lot of risk.

Denise Purtzer

Absolutely. You talked about that, that dollar versus $3.13. And one of the reasons why those costs and fraud go up is because of false declines. And I think that’s an important thing to bring up as well, because if you’ve got that scenario like you’re talking about with the freight-forwarder and you’ve got some basic rules to set up or you’re just flagging things that come out of Miami or out of Brooklyn and you’re saying, “Well, that’s a little suspicious. I’m just going to go ahead and decline it.”

What if it is a good order? And then you’ve got a false decline on your hands and an angry customer and tarnishing your brand and all these sorts of things that could be happening because of the fact that you falsely decline them. So I think that that’s definitely a good thing to bring up. One of the many, many scenarios that can occur.

I think another thing to consider as well, especially if you’re a smaller startup merchant, because we’ve referred to that a few times here and we work with merchants that are just starting out to merchants that have very well-known brand names globally and everything in between. But when you look at those smaller merchants, they think a lot of times that they’re not going to be prone to fraud in any way because their site won’t be targeted. But we know for a fact that that’s not true, right, David?

David Fletcher

Absolutely. We have learned that these fraudsters, just as we get more sophisticated as a fraud benching company and our merchants get more sophisticated in handling their business, the fraudsters are getting more sophisticated and they communicate. They have their inner circle and they’re out there testing cards, testing sites. And that’s why sometimes we talk to that small merchant or that mid-sized merchant and they say, “Oh, well I just get a few and they’re typically smaller transactions. So I’m not too worried about it.”

But what they don’t realize is that the fraudster, a ring could be just using their site to test cards because they know they can get it through or worse yet, they’re getting tested because they’re about to get slammed. We have a large laptop manufacturer that we work with, that they had some testing that was happening to them in December and January of this year, December of ‘19 and January of this year. And in February we saw it, bam, they got hit hard.

Fortunately, they’re one of our customers and we were on top of that, but we saw the testing happening. So we were paying attention to that and watching that. And that’s common. That happens all the time. That’s what they do. And it’s scary. So what happens is the merchant says, “Holy cow. I’m going to tighten up my fraud rules.” So now they have the automation. They really lock that down, and now they created the other problem that you mentioned. Now they have false declines.

Denise Purtzer

Exactly.

David Fletcher

So it’s like, you’ve traded off one problem for the other.

Denise Purtzer

It’s out of balance.

David Fletcher

Right, exactly. And you’ve got to find that that balance between the two. You’re going to have a fraud issue here or there. You’re going to have a false decline occasionally, but how do you set it up so you have as few as possible of both sides? That’s the riddle that I’m happy to say that we solve. That’s definitely something that we have figured out and that’s what most merchants need to be paying attention to on how to really figure out that right balance.

Denise Purtzer

So you mentioned laptop merchants and electronics. That is definitely one of the high-risk categories. So back to our promise of delivering that list of high-risk categories. Laptops and electronics are because they’re trusted names, they have a high AOV. They’re resellable. Just like watches and jewelry — those are also products that are also very, very susceptible to high fraud. And then one of the things that we’ve seen huge increases in volumes is online sales of alcohol. And that’s another category that suspect of fraud.

Denise Purtzer

So you pair that with this increase in purchases online and the merchants all of a sudden in a situation where they’re like, “Is this good? Are these good sales? Is this a good surge? What’s going on?” So that’s something we’ve talked through with many, many merchants too.

And then a couple more big games in hardware and home improvement. So all of those things are susceptible to fraud. But you’ve got an interesting one, too, that you know firsthand with shoes of all things. Can you talk about that a little bit?

David Fletcher

Yeah. It’s interesting that you brought that up. So my oldest son who’s 22 now, he at one point ... this was going back to high school. He was a junior in high school going into his senior year. He was into selling shoes, and there’s a pretty good market for selling shoes and the resale of some of these high-end tennis shoes, I would call them, I guess. And what he did was he met a programmer who he was able to get him to write a bot. And what this bot did was every time Nike released a new shoe, the bot would go online, hit the form and order the shoe.

So these were all limited edition shoes. There were very few that were being released and he was able to acquire a lot of these shoes. And the interesting thing is he was selling most of them online and then fraud became an issue. And even though he was using a payment processor that made it a little bit safer, he still had issues. So he had to change that business model to be in-person only.

Not that he had a brick and mortar, but he could no longer really do the transaction online because of the fraudulent activity. So he had to start doing it in person, meeting people in person to do the transaction. But that goes to show you: It doesn’t matter what size you are, you’re going to deal with fraud. You will see fraud and it can impact you. And fortunately enough, he was young enough that it didn’t really hurt him financially, the few issues that he did have, but there are a lot of smaller merchants that we talked to that get hit with some pretty large chargebacks.

One month of a lot of chargebacks can literally put them out of business. It can really, really impact the cashflow for them. So in that situation, you’ve lost the product that you have to pay for the product and you’re losing the revenue from the product. So double-whammy there when it comes to that.

Denise Purtzer

Yeah. I always feel bad, because we always talk about so many obstacles and the different things to be worried about and everything else on every podcast, it seems like. But ecommerce is not easy. It’s definitely challenging. And hopefully some of the things that we brought up today around these obstacles to help you think about things a little bit more and help protect you against some of these things. But the good news is here today. We’ve talked about what a great place it is to sell in the U.S.

I mean, you’ve got a captive audience that’s buying online and doing it often and they’re well-connected. So all of those things lead to an opportunity for those that are thinking about starting an online business or trying to grow from a brick and mortar and going online, which many of our jewelers are, as an example right now, or trying to expand your business as a whole. So hopefully this gives some food for thought.

So given that, if you’d like to know more about how to prevent ecommerce fraud, you can visit our website. It’s www.clear.sale. And if you have any questions, please reach out to us at podcast@clear.sale. Thank you for listening to the Gateway to Ecommerce Podcast, where global ecommerce leaders discuss challenges, best practices, new tech, and secrets to success.

Please subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Play and leave us a review. We’d love the feedback. Join us next time for episode 12, where I’m going to be talking with Rafael to discuss ecommerce fraud with a focus on holiday sales and how to handle those peak volumes. Until then, bye-bye.

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