The first week of July is in the record books. This year has steadily been gaining speed and everyone has started with Q4 planning. It is pretty clear to me that in South Africa ecommerce is starting to become more acceptable. I know that sounds weird but I still feel retailers see ecommerce as a challenge and not a complimentary channel to make further revenue. It made me smile reading that Mr Price and CNA will be adding more attention to their ecommerce offerings. Are we at a tipping point for ecommerce in South Africa?

I was overseas last week and when walking around in Turkey the retailers in the shopping malls had URLs and social media stickers on the windows of their shops. Bricks and Mortar is definitely in certain markets adding ecommerce to their touch points for customers. I hope you missed the weekly posts last week, the silence wont be happening again. So, without anymore babbling, here are the stories that got me to click and read more.

1. Big e-reader is watching you. I must confess, the fact that Amazon and Barnes & Noble is tracking us while reading on their ereaders is not to surprising. Hardware that has direct contact with a company will be used by the company, right. Being able to track your users (and yes that does sound scary) is one of the big strengths of digital. I wonder if this is the start of digital publishers using this data to look for authors that write content that is wildly popular.

2. Simon & Schuster is adding QR codes to all its print books. Will readers bite? Publishers are looking for ways for readers to be able to have more experiences with their books. Is this a response to ebooks? I am not sure but what I do know is that publishers are under pressure. QR codes is something that adds to the experience of owning a Simon & Schuster books.

3. Augmented Reality Offers Personalized Shopping Experience from IBM. IBM is company willing to take Research and Development seriously. Augmented reality is something that I believe that has for physical retail. So that product that you see in the shelve in front of you, now has the ability to provide further information before you buy it. Can you imagine that?

4. Viral Video: Alibaba Makes a Funny. Alibaba is trying to change the perception of their company. Think about it, they are a Chinese behemoth but really they are a global company. So these videos which are funny, is an instrument that they are using to try and to change the perception that US users have of their business. I think is a matter of time before acquisitions are made on other continents…

5. The Samwers are trimming their portfolio: Here’s why —  In this past week, we saw that Rocket Internet has decided to exit on their home furniture business, Fashion for Home. I think is pretty clear that they have too many businesses in certain verticals and have started to either exit or close them. I am not really surprised as in general the strong get stronger and the weak get weaker. One other note is that I think furniture businesses online is a difficult one. There are normally reasons for the fact that their is a dominant player (IKEA) in a vertical.

6. ShopKeep Leverages iPad to Disrupt Point-of-Sale System Incumbents. Point of Sales are one of the most important parts of a retail business. However, we might begin to see more startups trying to disrupt the market leaders. I think between Square and an iPad based point-of-sale system, we will see more shops being opened without using the normal ways of operation.  This is one industry to keep an eye on as potentially this could assist in making that gap between offline and online smaller.

7. McKinsey: Understanding shifts in consumer behavior – a very interesting presentation that shows the impact that mobile has on commerce. A must read and bookmark..

8. Interview : MySmartPrice team on funding and the road ahead. India as readers will know is a market that I look at. Comparison shopping engine MySmartPrice raised a round of funding. What I find interesting is that Junglee from Amazon.com has had little effect on MySmartPrice and that Flipkart does not allow price comparison websites to list their offers with others. On both it makes me wonder, is Indian ecommerce starting to contract.. ecommerce business not allowing comparison shopping engines to list their products are missing out on a piece of the market that will hurt them in the long run.

9. Yuppiechef and the secret recipe to ecommerce success. Yuppiechef is a South African ecommerce business which does everything right. I have shopped with them and I love how they operate. Focus on the customer and be customer centric is the short summary.

10. More Google Shopping news: Comparison Shopping Engines are in the mix! This is a something that most of us in the comparison shopping would never have expected.  Google shopping has historically ensure that Comparison engines are not allowed in their offering. Yet, this has now occurred. Google what is your play here? Taking click costs from 2 sources? Trying to make peace with the comparison shopping engine industry?