Alibaba’s “massive success” in turning a day celebrated by single college students -- Singles’ Day -- into a shopping holiday spawned a host of me-too e-commerce events, Coresight Research reported Friday. Last year, China’s highest-grossing shopping holiday generated $25.3 billion -- more than five times that of Black Friday -- and was held in 225 countries and regions, said analyst Deborah Weinswig. Alibaba supports the event with a “star-studded gala,” with past celebrities including Nicole Kidman and Pharrell Williams. The e-commerce company’s success led to wannabe events including Amazon Prime Day in July, JD.Com’s 6/18 Anniversary Sale and other holidays on special dates in the Chinese calendar, she said. The “preheat period” for Singles’ Day is approaching, when shoppers learn about 11/11 promotions and begin placing discounted items in their digital shopping carts to purchase on Singles’ Day, she said. This year’s GMV is expected to break the previous record, which was up 39 percent over 2016.

Amazon said it’s bumping its minimum wage to $15 an hour for all 250,000-plus full-time, part-time, temporary and seasonal employees in the U.S., effective Nov 1, and it will lobby for a hike in the federal minimum wage, locked at $7.25 for nearly a decade. Amazon has come under fire from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, who last month co-wrote with Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act, which would require compensation to the federal government from companies whose employees have to rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and other federal assistance. In a Tuesday statement, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said: “We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do, and decided we want to lead.” Bezos, whose net worth recently passed $150 billion according to reports, nudged "competitors and other large employers to join us.” In March, Target announced a dollar bump in the minimum wage to $12 an hour (see 1803060025), saying the rate would extend to $15 an hour by 2020. Walmart said in January, it was raising its minimum wage to $11 an hour.

A U.S. District Court, Louisville, law clerk granted Tempur Sealy’s request Monday to serve a Digital Millennium Copyright Act subpoena on Amazon for information leading to the identity of a third-party merchant that the bedding manufacturer alleges is selling counterfeit goods on the e-commerce site, court records show. The subpoena (in Pacer) gives Amazon three weeks to turn over to Tempur Sealy's attorneys any documents it has on the merchant, Astonishing Goods, that identify the operator’s name and physical and email addresses. Tempur Sealy wants the information “only for the purpose” of protecting its intellectual property, said the attorneys (in Pacer). The lawyers also asked Amazon (in Pacer) to "immediately take steps" to disable access to the "infringing materials" and notify anyone who participated in the distribution of the goods that "their conduct was illegal and could be subject to enforcement." Tempur Sealy holds Amazon as "the party responsible for hosting the user's storefront," they said. They didn't explicitly accuse Amazon of contributory infringement but said Tempur Sealy is "not waiving its right to engage in other enforcement activities, and reserves all rights to do so at any time." Amazon didn’t comment. Under DMCA provisions, copyright holders can request federal subpoenas to stop alleged online infringement without filing an actual lawsuit and without requiring a judge's signature.

Nuance announced an e-commerce prediction service enabling brands to predict inbound customers’ intent or next requests and proactively offer personalized, automated responses. A goal of the service is to quickly resolve inquiries or concerns “without needing additional clarifying questions,” said the company Wednesday. The service is part of Nuance’s customer engagement platform, said to allow organizations to have “human-like interactions” with customers across channels including interactive voice response, web, SMS, outbound, third-party messaging applications and IoT devices. Nuance’s prediction service analyzes aggregate, anonymized customer data from across all channels “to model and understand what incoming customers are likely going to ask" and offer a personalized interaction, in some cases "proactively, before a customer even engages,” said the company. It said results include cost savings from reduced time to solution and fewer customer queries for live agents to handle. During each encounter, the service makes a calculated projection of the reason for the engagement and automatically updates the prediction model to ensure the best experience the next time, said Nuance. The constant analysis allows organizations to “fail fast” by testing new concepts, offers or menus quickly and determining the best performers, Nuance said. Enterprises field billions of customer interactions each year, requiring companies to anticipate and resolve customer needs in advance to operate efficiently, said Robert Weideman, Nuance general manager.

E-commerce will continue to gain share of total holiday season sales, said a Monday Coresight Research report, saying online retail sales will rise by nearly 16 percent year on year, capturing 20 percent of nonfood retail sales in Q4. The research firm forecasts 4 percent overall growth in holiday season sales on favorable economic conditions including low unemployment, wage growth and modest inflation, comparing it with 5.5 percent growth last year and average annual increases of 2.8 percent over the past decade. One more shopping day this season will help boost sales over 2017, with 32 days -- the longest possible period -- between Thanksgiving and Christmas vs. 31 last year, it said. Over the full year, Coresight projects more than a third of CE sales and more than 20 percent of apparel sales will be made online, higher during the holiday season. It cited findings from Prosper Insights & Analytics pointing to a solid, “though possibly mixed,” season ahead after its July survey of consumers’ spending plans for the holiday seasons showed they plan to spend more than last year. But the number of respondents who said they plan to spend less this year also grew, it said. Coresight predicted a “robust” holiday season “though it may be more mixed than current trajectories imply.” Shoppers will open their wallets, but “retailers should not expect a spectacular end to the year,” it said.

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers on Friday introduced a bill meant to “stabilize pending interstate sales tax chaos” in response to the recent Wayfair decision (see 1807240040). The Online Sales Simplicity and Small Business Relief Act -- from Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis.; Anna Eshoo, D-Calif.; Jeff Duncan R-S.C.; and Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif. -- “bans retroactive taxation, establishes an orderly phase-in of compliance obligations, and creates a small business exemption.” NetChoice CEO Steve Delbianco applauded, saying Wayfair “erased 60 years of settled law that restrained state tax collectors from reaching across their borders.” The National Conference of State Legislatures spoke against the bill, calling it “an unwarranted intrusion on state authority which if enacted would continue the competitive advantage online sellers enjoy over Main Street sellers.”

Mobile shopping will dominate the upcoming holiday season, delivering 68 percent of all e-commerce traffic, said a Wednesday Salesforce report. For the first time, more orders and visits to e-commerce sites will be made on phones -- 46 percent -- than on any other device, including computers (44 percent) and tablets (9 percent), it said. Artificial intelligence-based product recommendations will drive 35 percent of all digital holiday shopping revenue, forecast to grow 13 percent vs. 2017. Cyber Week -- the Tuesday before Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday -- will account for 40 percent of all holiday season digital revenue worldwide, it projected, while Black Friday will capture 10 percent, followed by Cyber Monday at 8 percent. Mobile traffic will peak on Christmas Eve, Salesforce said, when consumers expect to make 72 percent of visits and 54 percent of orders. Free shipping will continue to be important to consumers, with 72 percent of e-commerce orders expected to ship for free, a “slight increase” over 2017, it said. Some 83 percent of shoppers ages 18-44 say they use phones to shop while in a physical store, said analyst Rick Kenney. Instagram is predicted to be the fastest growing social channel for referring digital traffic to retail sites, growing 51 percent year on year, while Facebook will see a 7 percent growth decline.

Fintech company Blackhawk and lottery platform company Linq3 said Monday Ohio consumers can now buy Mega Millions and Powerball tickets via a mobile-enabled Lottery Card at Buehler's, Giant Eagle and Kroger stores. Adults 18 and older can buy the cards on card racks and checkout lanes for $10 or $20 to cover five or 10 plays, with an 89 cent charge for the mobile payment service. Using their smartphones, customers text a card's unique code to a specified number, complete enrollment information and then select numbers and draw date for the lottery games. Winners are notified via text and picture message and most winnings are paid automatically via PayPal, they said.

Customs and Border Protection is focused on deploying new technologies and catching up with the massive growth in e-commerce as it moves toward the end of the decade, Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said at a CBP event in Atlanta. Beyond helping confront the “seismic shift” in the supply chain over the past several years, new technologies -- like RF identification and facial recognition -- will soon smooth trade across land borders, McAleenan said Tuesday. The growth in e-commerce “looks more like a rocket taking off than a plane,” he said. Small parcel shipments doubled 2016-17, and the agency doesn’t see the trend abating. CBP needs new legal and regulatory authority and partnerships so it can oversee new parties in the supply chain -- e-marketplaces like Amazon and warehousing operations for third-party sellers -- plus existing entities it has never regulated. Blockchain “may also be part of the answer,” giving CBP the ability to determine product origin and whether the product came from a trusted supplier, supply chain and e-marketplace, McAleenan said. Companies are looking at the technology from the perspective of “their ecosystem for their business model,” so one may use blockchain to ensure its provenance from the beginning of the supply chain while another may use it to add data that can ride along the blockchain and share more information about a shipment.

Free shipping, not entertainment, is the primary driver of Amazon Prime memberships, said a Wednesday Diffusion Group report, saying more than half of U.S. adult broadband users are Prime subscribers. Nearly four in five Amazon Prime users said free shipping topped reasons for subscribing to Prime, 11 percent citing Prime Video and 10 percent naming Prime Music, photos, reading, Twitch or other benefits. Folding digital media into Prime memberships has “sweetened the deal and brought many new subscribers into the mix,” but service value shifts from media to free shipping as members buy more merchandise, said TDG President Michael Greeson. The retail perks differentiate Amazon from streaming media competitors including Netflix, Hulu, Spotify and Apple, but its Prime streaming offerings are “largely loss leaders to Amazon's cash-cow retail business,” Greeson said.