Retail Analysis Oxylabs’ data has indicated as much. As some have foreseen,


consumers are careful in their purchases and that has been reflected in the business, specifically retail and ecommerce, reaction.


Data trends in ecommerce and retail One of the most important findings is, as one would expect, consumers moving away from luxury and non-essential goods, with businesses and retailers adapting to such trends. Black Friday insights were especially telling. It has long been the tradition that Black Friday is a huge event in


which consumers increase spending with a focus on non-essential goods. For example, in 2021, the most scraped categories – or areas where businesses expected customers to focus the most – included retail and consumer electronics amongst others. The Black Friday of 2022 showed great differences.


Retail has moved from the most scraped category to second place, overtaken by software development. Most telling, however, is consumer electronics. In 2021 this held sixth place within the most scraped categories. In 2022, it was absent from the top 10 entirely. Additionally, newcomers to the top


10 were personal care and health- related goods, indicating changing consumer behaviours and the expected adaptation by businesses. Preliminary Christmas data indicates


attenuate the negative effects of such events, but exerting real influence is almost impossible. The only thing businesses are left with is adapting to the changing


circumstances. Before the advent of large-scale online data collection, most of the information would come from internal sources and, potentially, industry knowledge sharing. While the former does provide some insight into the consumer, it is


highly limited by the scale of the business. Only true ecommerce and retail giants could say they have enough data that is at least partly unbiased – smaller businesses would be completely out of the game. Knowledge sharing across industry veterans is a useful approach,


“Retail has


moved from the most scraped


a similar trend. While the demand for products has been stabilising throughout 2022, overall expected spending remains below the 2021 expectations. Consumer electronics may seem to have recovered, however, there is a dissonance apparent in the expected spending. While consumers want to purchase smartphones, they expect to spend less than $800, putting many newer models out of range. As such, according to Oxylabs’ data, businesses do not expect


consumers to truly spend a significant amount on electronics as the category still has not returned to 2021 levels. These expectations might be due to the fact that purchase behaviour remains cautious and careful. Finally, travel, experience, and entertainment purchases have not


recovered to pre-2020 levels. Even as inter-family and celebrations have recovered and, possibly, even surpassed pre-pandemic habits, consumers are still reluctant to purchase experiences and travel as gifts. In the end, retail and ecommerce continue to experience a fairly


large shakeup in consumer behaviour due to external factors, largely outside the control of businesses. All they can do is learn to adapt to the circumstances.


Adapting to black swan events Most intense shake-ups in consumer purchasing behaviour are usually due to political, economic, or large-scale psychological circumstances, all of which retail businesses would be hard-pressed to influence. Marketing and public relations might be able to


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category to second place, overtaken by software development.”


however, it is again limited by bias. Even large businesses will have to truncate the amount of data and translate it into easy-to-digest insights, which lends itself tremendously to human error and bias. Web scraping can enter the ecosystem as a third method of gathering important data for adapting to black swan events. Smaller businesses can closely track large retailers and try to deduce their pricing and product strategies during consumer behaviour shocks to implement the same or similar into their own processes. Additionally, completely new


sources of information become available – most importantly, the comments, feedback, and thoughts of consumers across the globe. Sentiment analysis can unveil intended changes of behaviour before they actually occur on a


large scale. In other words, instead of being passive


collectors of data, retailers can take up an active role in web scraping. Such an approach bypasses the time lag before actual changes in consumer


behaviour happen and appear within the internal data of


ecommerce companies. As such, web scraping can predict consumer behaviour changes


much earlier than internal data. For example, sentiment analysis may reveal that consumers intend to spend less during Christmas on electronic goods (as is the case currently), allowing retailers to make changes that reduce oversupply or entice additional purchases to make offers more attractive. Clearly current events have shaken up the retail and consumer


industry. Companies are facing much more cautious consumers who are less willing to spend large amounts of money on holidays and regular purchasing behaviour seems to be just as equally affected. Usually, retailers and ecommerce companies would adapt to these


changes by analysing internal data. It has the drawback, however, of only becoming apparent after the changes have occurred, forcing retailers to be reactive instead of proactive. Web scraping provides businesses with the capability to be


proactive and adapt to consumer behaviour changes before they start affecting the bottom line. While the negative effects cannot be removed in their entirety, adapting could heavily attenuate part of the damage that could be inflicted by events largely outside of the control of retailers.


March 2023 | 7


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