Where Will E-Commerce Go in 2025? A Look at Emerging Trends

As 2024 draws to a close, it’s time for e-commerce strategists and marketers to think about how e-commerce will likely change in the year ahead. From new ways to use artificial intelligence for customer experience to the acceleration of social commerce, and from hot e-commerce growth markets to strategies for protecting e-commerce brands and customers, these are the trends that will shape e-commerce in 2025. Understanding them and knowing how to leverage them can help your business stay competitive, grow and build stronger customer relationships.

AI for CX Improvements

The trend with the most potential to impact e-commerce customer experience in the year ahead is AI. Because of its machine learning and automation capabilities, AI can manage and improve complex processes such as personalization, product search, customer service and more.

For example, Deloitte suggests the possibility of AI-driven product education as a way to help consumers learn in real time whether a product is the right option to meet their needs. Options like virtual try-ons, product videos, and chatbots already exist to help consumers with their decisions, but AI has the potential to unify and enrich these resources for customer decision-making.

Using AI this way could, Deloitte notes, reduce the rate of expensive returns. It could also help meet consumers’ desire for better product search experiences: 82 percent of shoppers in a recent international survey on consumer attitudes, fraud and CX said they’re more likely to return to e-commerce sites that give them “accurate search and plenty of useful filtering options.”

Social Commerce Popularity Grows

Making purchases on social media is likely to become more of a habit and less of a novelty in the year ahead. In 2024, 54 percent of online shoppers in the consumer attitudes survey reported at least one social commerce purchase in the preceding 12 months, up from 50 percent in the previous survey. Consumers in emerging markets were more likely to have made a social commerce purchase (for example, 66 percent in Argentina vs. 41 percent in the U.S.).

Some analysts, though, expect the real growth in this space to come from higher rates of spending among existing social shoppers, with spending per buyer predicted to “nearly double” by 2027, compared to 2023 spending. Businesses that want to grow their social commerce channels would do well to encourage their existing social customers to spend more, with new customer acquisition playing a secondary role in their growth strategy.

Growth Acceleration in Selected Markets

Mature e-commerce markets like the U.S. (which is also home to half the world’s e-commerce sites) offer lots of opportunities to connect with customers, but also lots of competition. Businesses looking for an early-mover advantage or faster sales growth may want to focus on the fastest growing markets, where e-commerce is still gaining users but the online retail field is less crowded.

Data from the U.S. International Trade Administration shows that global e-commerce is growing by 11.6 percent year-over-year, which is slightly less than the compound annual growth rate for e-commerce in the U.S. Meanwhile, India and Brazil top the fastest-growing list at more than 14 percent annual growth. Argentina and Turkey are next, with growth rates above 13.5 percent. Mexico rounds out the top five fastest growing e-commerce markets at 12.93 percent annual growth.

To capitalize on e-commerce growth trends, it’s necessary to understand customer preferences in each new market and create a customized plan for each expansion. For example, it may be easiest to win customers by selling through the marketplaces they trust the most, but it’s not always going to be the same marketplace. In Argentina, 63 percent of consumer attitudes survey participants indicated a high level of trust in Mercado Libre — more than double the 31 percent who put high levels of trust in Amazon.com. In Mexico, however, Amazon outranks Mercado Libre for high levels of trust, 72 percent compared to 58 percent.

Data Protection and Fraud Prevention Needs Evolve

Each of the trends above brings with it specific challenges related to data protection and fraud prevention.

AI offers many potential business benefits, but it has also given organized fraud groups the ability to expand, accelerate and improve their attacks on businesses and individuals. For example, AI-enabled spear phishing campaigns can already impersonate trusted brands well enough to fool even savvy consumers and employees into sharing credentials. The attackers can then use that data to take over customer accounts, synthesize new identities to open accounts, or access retailers’ databases to steal large amounts of customer data. AI models that leverage customer data to personalize recommendations and shopping experiences must also have guardrails that prevent them from exposing that data.

Protecting customers from social commerce fraud will also be critical for avoiding customer churn and brand damage. Sixteen percent of respondents in the consumer attitudes survey experienced at least one incident of social commerce fraud in the previous 12 months, up from 13 percent the year before. Part of the problem is that it’s easy for scammers to run dozens or hundreds of fake ad campaigns at a time on social platforms, so that even as ads get taken down, others will pop up to snare customers. As social shoppers get comfortable spending more on their favorite platforms, the motivation increases for attackers to keep playing cat-and-mouse with fake ads.

Social commerce fraud goes hand in hand with rising rates of brand impersonation. U.S. consumers lost more than $1 billion to brand imposters in 2023, according to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Earlier this year, the FTC finalized a rule that allows the agency to sue brand imposters to recover consumer losses. However, in the short term, e-commerce merchants need to monitor their brand for impersonation scams across all channels, from the web and marketplaces to social media, email, and SMS.

The Year of AI in E-Commerce?

AI has the potential to help e-commerce businesses address each of these security challenges. AI-powered email security tools can identify AI-enabled phishing scams better than many security experts. Machine learning models can be highly effective at detecting e-commerce payment fraud, especially with contextual review to aid in continuous algorithm updates. Fraud can also be harder to detect accurately in new markets, and AI models can help to identify good customer behavior and fraud strategies to get the most value from your expansion investments. Automated AI scanning solutions can watch the internet for brand impersonation attempts and make it easier for brands to document, report and follow up on impostor ads, sites and emails.

Whether your e-commerce business embraces all the trends forecast for 2025, AI is one to watch and start working with. By starting now to apply AI for stronger security, you can build the foundation for improving your CX, social commerce, and growth through expansion, along with other elements of your business.

Rick Sunzeri serves as the client solutions director at ClearSale, a global pioneer and proven leader in ecommerce fraud protection solutions, chargeback protection guarantee for ecommerce merchants.