Online Channels and Marketplace Execution Becoming the Next Growth Battleground

At CrescoData, we continually evaluate trends in what our merchants and retailers are selling, how they are selling their products or services, and where they are seeing successes or challenges.  Over the past three months, CrescoData has recognized a clear shift in eCommerce momentum:

Brands are no longer competing simply for larger baskets, but for more frequent, recurring purchases across an expanding mix of marketplaces, social commerce channels, and cross-border destinations. This shift is probably best expressed from the Amazon Prime Day(s) in July and monthly Single’s Day Events across TikTok Shops and socials this year.  Basket sizes are slightly down across the board, thus increasing pressure on customer acquisition costs, conversion rates, and fulfilment costs.  However, in just the last 90+ shopping days, overall checkouts have increased substantially.  Customers are shopping more through marketplaces and aren’t waiting around for bulk buys or shipping discounts.  This trend is likely to continue as consumers expect products to be discoverable wherever they shop and delivered with greater speed, accuracy, and convenience.  AI-led product discovery, TikTok Shop growth, marketplace-first buying behavior, and smaller but more frequent orders are all reinforcing the need for brands to remove manual friction from their commerce operations. 

In July, the CrescoData team were able to meet hundreds of our customers and retailers at the Online Retailer event in Sydney, Australia.  During this event, the discussions we had focused on merchant’s needs to improve regional logistics, access to easier international selling platforms, and stronger demand for localised content.  Cresco’s internal analysis mirrors these focus areas. At the same time, cross-border commerce into Southeast Asia is accelerating, with Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam standing out as high-opportunity markets for Australian and New Zealand brands.  For CrescoData, these trends create a strong opportunity to help brands scale across marketplaces, automate product and order data flows, and build the operational resilience that will be needed to win more and more checkouts despite the shrinking basket sizes in 2026! 

Ready to win the next growth battleground?

Don’t let operational friction hold back your channel expansion. Connect with the CrescoData team today to see how our automated commerce platform helps you seamlessly list, sync, and scale across global marketplaces.