TRENDING
Special Report uncovers consumer buying
trends such as:
• The travel industry has been extremely
hard hit. Regional variations are
appearing, in particular an increase in
purchases of inbound international travel
to China in the weeks before the country
closed down inbound travel on March 26.
Data in March points to ‘optimistic travel’
in which the travel date is 120 or more
days following booking. Such bookings
now account for 65% of travel purchases.
• The food and beverage industry has seen a
dramatic increase in online purchases. New
accounts now represent 15–25% of all
customer volume, compared to 5–7% prior
to the pandemic. As merchants struggle to
manage the increased volume and meet
expectations of new customers, we are
seeing an increase in service chargebacks.
Fraudsters are exploiting confusion and
uncertainty caused by government and
corporate policies:
“
FORTER’S
IDENTITY-
BASED SYSTEM
AUTHENTICATES
THE BUYER,
NOT JUST THE
BEHAVIOUR.
• As people adjust to working from
home, Forter sees a marked increase
in social engineering fraud, associated
with fake emails purporting to be from
HR and corporate addresses. Here
fraudsters invite people to click for more
information, instead taking victims to
malicious sites.
• With a shift to online shopping in apparel
and accessories, we see an increase in gift
card purchases. While a higher number
of legitimate buyers usually means that
fraud rates drop, gift card fraud rates have
not. Fraudsters have noticed an increased
demand of the completely virtual
merchandise that is easy to monetise.
In its recent report, Mitigate Coronavirus
(COVID-19) Business Impacts With Digital
Commerce (March 2020), Gartner asserts
that ‘the COVID-19 outbreak will negatively
impact business performance in the short
term as offline activities are cancelled and
online orders overwhelm delivery capacities.
Application leaders can mitigate the impact
and ensure continuity of operations by
accelerating digital commerce initiatives’.
“With more consumers experiencing buying
online, we expect merchants who hadn’t
considered e-Commerce as a viable platform
to now try it,” said Reitblat. “Merchants that
had already adopted e-Commerce struggle
to meet this increase in demand. Working
collaboratively from home and hiring to
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