Australia’s leading social e-commerce platform, BuyersCircle CEO, Lance Eerhard (pictured below) and chairman, Siimon Reynolds (pictured above) have shared their insights on ecommerce trends for the year ahead, forecasting growth in certain categories and the latest technology set to impact the market.

Amid ongoing economic instability and inflationary pressure, consumers are likely to continue tightening their belts this year, which drives more ‘considered’ shopping to cater to genuine needs over discretionary items, according to Eerhard.

“We expect growth in online shopping for categories like pet, baby and beauty, coupled with a return of categories like food and alcohol that saw constrained growth in 2022,” he said.

BuyersCircle, which brings together sellers, suppliers and consumers on one platform will continue to increase its base of e-tailers, taking more social e-commerce to mainstream Australia.

“We have a roadmap of categories and brands and we’ll continue to focus on growing our product range in the household ‘essentials’ categories to appeal to more shoppers. Our sourcing team and strong partners in the logistics space help us keep our eyes open to market trends we are able to quickly respond to consumer needs,” Eerhard said.

Reynolds predicts an exponential increase in social e-commerce with an increasing number of home e-businesses being set up by everyday Australians and influencers wanting to cash in on the ease of selling goods via social channels.

“We are proud to be at the epicentre of this social e-commerce trend and a giant wave of selling and buying online – BuyersCircle has dramatically changed the way businesses, entrepreneurs, and influencers approach social selling,” he said.

“BuyersCircle allows everyday Australians and aspiring entrepreneurs to launch their own virtual dropshipping business in less than three minutes via a mobile app. Our various platforms have over 48,000 e-tailers selling more than 30 million products to more than 919,000 registered users in Australia. People continue to be stunned by how simply and quickly a BuyersCircle user can open their own fully operational, fully stocked e-commerce store and sell to their social followers.”

Reynolds also believes that artificial intelligence will make a huge impact on the e-commerce space in 2023.

“There are already some impressive examples in the market with AI apps like Chat GPT and how simply and quickly you can manufacture quality content on almost any subject thanks to AI,” he said.

“BuyersCircle will greatly utilise AI in the near future. It will allow us to create compelling sales copy for our tens of thousands of products, respond to and reach out to customers in quick and leveraged ways, and mass customise both our product offerings and our communications.”