GetElastic published article about how big data will transform ecommerce.

"Ecommerce is on the verge of a big shift driven by big data and intelligent technologies. This shift is towards a more efficient, personalized, even automated customer journey. Emerging personalization tools are designed to mimic the brain, leveraging neural networks and deep learning. Netflix is already moving in this direction, and it’s known Google, Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo and others are also embracing these technologies through startup acquisitions and key hires."

"Inspired by the central nervous system, Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are computational models capable of machine learning and pattern recognition. Deep learning neural networks have more layers of abstraction than ANNs and have the ability to train neural networks to do some pretty incredible things like image recognition, natural language processing, language translation and automatic speech recognition."

"Back in 2008, Get Elastic featured Pluribo, a Firefox extension with natural language processing and sentiment analysis capabilities. One useful application was filtering down hundreds of Amazon reviews into a summary of pros and cons. Unfortunately, Pluribo fell victim to the financial crisis of 2009 and lack of VC funding. The concept, however, has huge implications for guided selling, alone or in combination with other deep learning tech."

"An ecommerce system with a Her-like artificial intelligence could receive a voice query: “I’m looking for a full-frame camera with long battery life, compatible with Mac OSX” and not only deliver personalized results, but can also ask further probing questions that the customer hasn’t thought about. For example, “what types of subjects do you typically shoot?” or “how important is size and weight to you?”"

"It’s not far off before computers will also recognize emotional signals like excitement, indecisiveness or frustration through voice or facial expression. There’s a current Indiegogo campaign that aims to build the first emotionally intelligent home console that understands conversation, mood and can react to these emotions with conversation. While an emotionally intelligent ecommerce application is dialoging with a customer, it can also tap into an aggregate of behavioral and sentiment data to suggest the most likely relevant alternatives and help the customer arrive at a confident purchase decision."

"Google is working on giving computers the ability “see.” It’s already built a tool that can recognize human faces, body parts and…cats…the most common contents of Youtube stills and Google Hangouts. The ability to search for matching products based on Google Glass snapshots, pictures on the ‘Net or other images offers a new way to search and discover products. Glass may play the role in identifying your eye fixation, further giving the machine context of what in the field of view you’re interested in."

"Pinterest recently pinned down and acquired a visual search technology to make searching for photos in context much easier. Rather than depending on user keyword tagging, visual search will identify images that match a word or other images (e.g. similar to pins you’ve already made). Imagine the implications for an ecommerce store. Via the Pinterest API, an ecommerce application with visual search functionality could look at a board or collection of boards and profile a customer’s tastes and intent. Or, a customer could upload a photo of anything (taken from a smartphone, Google Glass or found online) and match it against a product catalog. Ecommerce marketers that curate Pinterest boards could automate the process and discover far more than a human could with just keyword search and good luck."

"The popular audio-recognition app Shazam now has an always-on feature that listens for audio all day long, tags songs that don’t exist in your library, and makes them available for your perusal, saving you the hassle of unlocking your phone, loading the app and nearly causing an accident in your car (or whatever your context). Imagine with machine learning, Shazam and products like it could intelligently filter your auto-tags to what you’d most likely be interested in based on your existing library. And further than that, with deep neural networks, be able to decide which to go ahead and add to your library, even making a purchase on your behalf."

"Sound crazy? Amazon recently filed a patent for “anticipatory shipping,” which ships and order before it’s even placed. Amazon’s wealth of order history, search, wish list and click stream data may one day be leveraged this way. While at the moment, it’s just a patent, and we can foresee all kinds of snafus that can arise from making decisions on behalf of (and charging) customers, it’s not unreasonable to envision a day when menial tasks like purchasing groceries, sundries and gifts can be outsourced to an efficient, intelligent machine."

"It’s not about Big Data, it’s about smart data.”

According to this, Shanghai Head Office of the People's Bank of China (PBC), the country's central bank, has made available the CNY cross-border payment in the newly established Shanghai free trade zone (FTZ) so that people may purchase items from online shops overseas.

"PBC’s Head Office in Shanghai has stated that Allinpay, 99Bill, China Pay, Dongfang Electronics and Shengpay are now allowed to process cross-border payments in the Chinese currency for cross-border trade in the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone."

"Based on the service, the five payment firms will open a cross-border CNY account at the Shanghai branches of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank, China Merchants Bank and China Minsheng Bank to park provisions for cross-border CNY payment. The service requires no currency exchange procedure, and makes online shopping possible from offshore websites for regular Chinese shoppers, according to Chinese media reports."

"By taking into account the central bank's guidelines, companies that have online payment service licenses and are either incorporated in Shanghai or run subsidiaries in the free trade zone are eligible to provide CNY settlement for cross-border commerce of products and services."

"The Shanghai FTZ was launched in September 2013 to transform the CNY into an international currency and hence, providing financial liberalization."

"Speaking in numbers, CNY’s market share in the traditional financial trade grew to 8.66 percent in October 2013 from 1.89 percent in January 2012, according to the global transaction services organization SWIFT. CNY only ranks behind the USD which remains the leading currency with a share of 81%. EUR has retreated to third place with a market share of 6.64 percent in October 2013."

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="615"] Source Econsultancy[/caption]

According to this, Murdoch University internet security-related group of experts have voiced their worries concerning the incremental use of Quick Response (QR) codes.

"Murdoch university expert, Dr Nik Thompson, underlines that consumers cannot really figure out what type of content lies behind each and every internet download because the codes can only be read by a machine like a smartphone or tablet."

"Moreover, the expert exemplifies QR-based web fraud types through QR codes which, used maliciously, can either direct users to install malware or link them to possible threat websites. Another example are the marketing campaign codes that can also be used to subscribe people to unwanted services, such as premium SMS."

"As an extra example, the expert highlights, a poster with a QR code was displayed on the wall at a security conference, inviting passers-by to scan the code to win an iPad. As long as the conference lasted, 445 people scanned the code and visited the embedded link address without investigating about the reliability of the code. The passers-by behavior, the expert remarks, reflects the possibly dangerous level of trust that is invested in printed materials such as posters."

"Relating to QR code features, they can carry up to thousands to characters in comparison with standard barcodes which can represent up to 20 characters of information. Originally used in the automotive industry, QR codes are now used to direct people to URLs, contact details and other online content."

"To avoid the scammers, Dr Thompson suggests using QR code readers which allow you to preview the entire URL before proceeding to the website. He also recommends seeking out one of the many anti-malware apps available, developed by well-known internet security companies."

According to this, travel e-commerce is reaching a saturation point.

"Travel ecommerce (online travel, digital travel – the terms often vary) has been on a roll for quite a while now. The emergence of technology-fueled travel ecommerce can be traced back to the 1995/1996 time window when Preview, Travelocity and Expedia first appeared. It was of course much earlier, but let’s just use 1996 as the year where the category really started finding its feet. And, let’s face it, for nearly two decades it’s been an amazing ride. But perhaps now it’s time to start using the S Word: Saturation. Growth in digital travel will top out in many markets over the next four years. With air travel – and indeed the whole sector – operating in a consistent 3-5% growth model, anything less than 5% represents a reasonably steady state, eMarketer’s recent publication of two sets of datapoints illustrates the point."

"The first shows the total growth of ecommerce (defined as unmanaged business travel and leisure): Using this data, only five of the top 20 markets will experience growth rates of over 6%, and all of the markets will have declining growth rates. Indeed, two of the largest markets – Germany and Japan – will have growth rates below 2%. This should be a wake up call all those who are bullish on the long term growth of the sector. We must therefore accept that the glory days are coming to an end. Perhaps, even, time to change from a growth strategy to a share shift one. This change will gave far reaching implications across the entire marketplace."

"However, there is another interesting observation that can be drawn from the eMarketer data. Travel is perhaps not so special any more, compared to other ecommerce categories. Air travel, for example, may lose its cachet of being the most important – or special – element in the ecommerce food chain, and perhaps eventually take a smaller percentage of the total market. Whilst travel will still remain a significant portion of overall ecommerce, erhaps in the 25-30% range, so many other sectors will start to command a larger chunk of the consumer eommerce spend that the market will potentially start to see a flow of cross-technologies. This lesson has to be learned now, not least in areas of financial fulfillment, mobile, personalization and purchase process ."

"So perhaps now is the time to start rethinking how travel will be powered in three to five years time. Given the long gestation time for travel technology and its respective adoption, this means if you are not already aware then you are perhaps probably a bit too late already. Some argue that those whose iron grip on travel technology have inhibited innovation will eventually be swept away. The future of the sector is both exciting and terrifying, and we who live here have to accept this new reality. In travel technology the assumption has been that change is constant. True, except this time the change is not just intra-sector but inter-sector as well. "